


Changeling

by far2addicted



Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Changeling AU, Character's Name Spelled as Victor Some of the Time Too, Character's Name Spelled as Viktor, Confident Katsuki Yuuri, Fey AU, M/M, Phichit is Basically Puck, Rating May Change, Vicchan Lives, Victor Grows Up in Yuuri's Family, Viktor and Yuuri Get Switched at Birth, Viktor is a Faerie Prince, Yakov and Lilia are King and Queen of the Fey, Yuuri and Yuri are brothers, Yuuri is Stolen By the Faeries, part of the time
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-02-04
Updated: 2018-10-23
Packaged: 2019-03-11 17:48:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 31,748
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13529430
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/far2addicted/pseuds/far2addicted
Summary: “If the Faeries don’t know where to find us, they can’t give Yuuri back. Are you willing to take that risk?”“Toshiya.” Mama Katsuki held onto her husband with one hand and brushed the wispy silver hair away from the changeling’s forehead with the other. “I despaired of seeing our Yuuri ever again the first moment I laid eyes on this babe. Our child is gone, and we can’t get him back. The only thing we can do now is fill the voids in our hearts with love for something else and try to heal.”“And that is your final decision?”She nodded. “If our family has lost a child, then we will give this child a family.”☙☘❧All King Yakov and Queen Lilia, the rulers of the Fey Kingdom, have ever wanted was to spoil their son, Prince Viktor, so they decide to give him his very own changeling companion. However, a mistake is made by the trickster Phichit and instead of switching the chosen Yuuri Katsuki with an unnamed, magicless baby, Prince Viktor is offered to the Katsuki family. Unable to fix the mistake, the two boys must grow up in each other's world, knowing that to the families they live with, they are only a replacement - until the day their worlds collide once again.





	1. Switched

**Author's Note:**

> Hey guys! This is my first Yuri!!! on Ice fic and I'm super excited to write it! Also, I have wanted to write about changelings and fey universes for a super long time, so this fic is kinda super self-indulgent. Hope some other people enjoy it too! 
> 
> I want to keep this relatively "short", which is not saying much for me because I tend to be very long-winded. My last "one-shot" ended up around six chapters long and 20k words. 100k? Yeah, I can probably keep this to around 100k. Maybe.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Pichit sets out to find a changeling companion for his King and Queen's son, Prince Viktor, but along the way makes a terrible mistake.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi! So I realized I started this a long time ago and took a month hiatus for Camp NaNoWriMo in April and just... never came back. But I'm back now, the story is back on track, and I've edited and overhauled the whole thing! Thank you again for reading and bearing with my long break! (In my defense, I was writing a thesis).

❖⚘❖

 

It was unclear whether the long lives of the fey stemmed from immortality or the strange flow of time that affected their realm, so different from the world where the humans resided. Was a century really a century if it passed by in the blink of an eye, a span of a few weeks, a year, a decade at most? It was true that none of the fey had ever died of old age, but had they even been given the opportunity to grow old yet?

Mama Katsuki told these stories to her children every night, the tales of the culture they had moved into. Coming from Japan to Northern Europe as a child, she remembered very little of the tales of the culture she had been born into, so she was forced to make do with the ones she learned at the knees of the old local women who gossiped on their front steps. Her husband didn’t remember much more than her, having emigrated at about the same time, but they still wished to fill their children’s dreams with the same fancy they had been given as a child, even if they couldn’t quite remember it, so they turned to the local stories of Fey as a substitute for the yokai they had grown up with.

Mari, her oldest child, loved the stories of adventure the best, of the creation of worlds and how the fey King and Queen, Yakov and Lilia, had fought to align the order of the seasons to fit their moods. Her eyes shone when her mother told tales of Phichit, the little trickster sprite, and how he liked to play pranks on the unsuspecting nobles of the Fey court. Stories of dark forests and vanquishing evil left her breathless.

Her youngest child, Yuuri, was still a babe of two, just starting to make his way around on his own but not yet old enough for the same level of comprehension that Mari had. Still, his preference was clear as well: the kind of stories Mari liked frightened his gentle soul, and he much preferred the softer words that spoke of the beauty of the Fey, their palaces made of living flowers, sculpted ice and multi-faceted jewels that threw the light in every direction at once.

Still, they both listened with wide eyes and even wider smiles when she spoke of the Fey to them, so Mama Katsuki kept doing it every night before they went to sleep. Occasionally the youngest one, Yuuri, would wake his parents up at night, crying that the Faeries were watching him through the window as he slept. They always shushed him back to sleep with soothing whispers, assuring him that the Faeries were away in their castle and had no business with a little boy like him, then open the window to show him that no one was there before putting him back to bed, where he would sleep soundly again.

Phichit would always duck underneath the windowsill and hide carefully in the shadows as Papa Katsuki held the lantern out the window, his bright eyes gleaming in the light like those of a wild animal. He’d long been observing the family, with their strange complexion, dark hair and eyes unnaturally crinkled at the corners. His Masters the King Yakov and the Queen Lilia often kept human children at their court, delighted at the way they laughed at the shimmering grandeur of the Fey Castles. These humans were borrowed from their families and a replacement left in their cradles instead, usually a Fey glamoured to look like the child, either a babe born with defects or a traitor who proved themselves no longer useful. Sometimes these children were returned, if the mood of kindness struck the King and Queen. More often, they were abandoned, in both the human world or that of the Fey, as they grew too old to be amusing and more filled their places.

Phichit would always smile to himself when he beheld this particular baby. His Masters had recently had a child, a young boy who was Prince of the Fey, and were looking for a human child to be his companion. Seeking to integrate himself into their favor, the trickster had been looking for such a human companion since the Prince’s birth, and thought that the baby of this strange family with their unique ethnicity might be the perfect child for the job.

 

☙☘❧

 

“So you see, Masters,” Phichit finished with an elaborate bow, “I believe this boy to be the ideal - nay, the _perfect -_ companion to suit your son as he grows up, and it would be my honor to perform the exchange myself, the moment a suitable personage is identified.”

“Interesting.” King Yakov’s gruff manor shook Phichit, though he didn’t allow it to show. If this was his King is a good mood, he didn’t want to see the powerful fey angry. “You say he is intelligent?”

“For a human child, exceedingly so; his parents have already taught him to speak words of two different languages, and I have no doubt that he would be able to pick up our dialect with little trouble as well.”

“And he is beautiful?” Queen Lilia demanded.

“Quite,” Phichit answered with an even more elaborate bow. “His appearance is unlike any other you have ever had at your Court, I can assure you. You will not be disappointed.”

“Very well.” The Fey Queen waved her hand. “We already have a replacement in mind. Go to the Royal Nursery. The babe you are to exchange is sleeping within.”

“Yes, my Queen.” Phichit bowed so low that the top of his head bounced off the icy floor of the winter palace, then scampered off down the hallways.

When the trickster had left their presence, the Queen leaned over and squeezed her husband’s hand. “A human for our little boy, Yakov.”

A rare smile decorated the King of the Faeries’ face. “Just like we always wanted,” he replied.

“And it’s a perfect excuse to get rid of that sorry excuse of a magic-deprived faerie that was born after him. Our Court only needs one Prince.”

 

☙☘❧

 

Viktor, the wide-eyed faerie Prince born in the midst of winter and having inherited its powers from birth, was currently having the time of his life evading his nurses during his nap time. Old enough to know how to hide well but not old enough to understand the panic his servants felt every time he went missing, he giggled as he snuck around the winter palace, using the natural ice of the palace in conjunction with his own still-evolving powers to cloak himself every time they came close.

Eventually he found his way to the Royal Nursery, where he had slept as a baby. He had heard rumors that a second child had been born to his Mams and Paps, but he’d never seen the boy or even heard his name spoken, not even in whispers. They said that he had been born with some kind of defect, and hadn’t manifested a kind of magic after his birth. A Faerie without magic could never survive on his own in the Court, where one’s merit was directly correlated to the strength of their magic power. He should despise a child like that, but it only made Prince Viktor more curious instead, and he pushed open the door of the nursery to peek inside.

It was dark inside, but when his eyes adjusted he could see that the cradle shoved in the back of the nursery was occupied by a bundle. He walked up to the bundle and poked it, causing it to squirm slightly. Fascinated, he watched as a tiny hand reached out from the bundle and shook before the baby began to cry, thick choking sounds. Prince Viktor summoned up a few ice crystals above the baby’s head, causing the cries to be cut off with a gurgle of amusement instead. Twirling one finger, he caused the ice crystals to dance. The baby tried to grab at the crystals, but he pulled them up to bob just out of his reach.

“Poor thing,” he murmured as he watched the baby grab for the crystals. “Left here all by yourself. I wonder what your name is?”

The baby replied with the biggest yawn Prince Viktor had ever seen, almost splitting his head in two. He laughed in response. “I think you’re right. It is naptime, isn’t it?”

Careful not to hurt him, Prince Viktor climbed over the side of the cradle and settled himself down beside the baby, who had already fallen back asleep. Hooking one arm over the precious bundle, he smiled to himself as he let his head rest.

“I’m going to be the best big brother, just you wait and see.”

 

☙☘❧

 

When Phichit got to the Royal Nursery, he had to hold his breath before he got up enough courage to open the door. A lowly sprite such as himself would normally never be allowed so deep into the inner workings of the palace, and the sensation was at once heady and eerie. It was dark inside the room, but he quickly summoned up a glowing ball of light, his distinctive magic, to dispel the shadows.

He could just make out the child at the other end of the room, sleeping in a cradle. Phichit frowned as he approached him; the child was a lot older than he had anticipated, much older than the acceptable age to still sleep in a cradle. He cast a quick glance around; nope, this was the only bed occupied in the nursery, so it must be the child he was supposed to take. Working quickly and quietly so as not to wake him, Phichit levitated the child out of the bed and cradled him against his chest, then summoned up a gate made of twining branches and light that would lead to the world of the humans.

The baby in the cradle stirred and began to cry as the door swallowed up the forest sprite and the Prince he carried. Phichit had never even noticed him.

 

Phichit had to wait until the cover of darkness to make the change, and used a little bit of his magic to keep the boy asleep while he waited. When the mother had finally finished telling her children their story, she put them to bed and all the lights in the house went out. After waiting another hour just to be sure they were all asleep, Phichit crept to the window and snuck in.

The child was too old to pass for the two-year-old sleeping in the tiny trundle mattress without alterations, so Phichit quickly set about settling permanent glamours into his skin. First was his age; he used a quick spell to age the boy backwards about three years until he was the size of the baby he was to take with him back to the court. A spell like that virtually unwound the effects of time, dissolving both the age of the Faerie and their memories until they were the child they appeared to be, no matter their real age.

Holding the now smaller boy up, he looked from one face to the other. Normally, he would glamour the Fey offering’s features until they looked more like the child that was being taken, but he somehow couldn’t bring himself to marr the boy’s delicate face. Besides, he didn’t know if he even could replicate the strange ethnicity of the baby, and it seemed rude to even try. Allowing a few more sparks of light to flow from his fingers, he sent them to drift over the baby’s face to ensure he would stay sound asleep when he carefully lifted him from his bed. The last step was to lay the Fey baby in his place and levy one final spell that sealed his magic powers before silently stealing from the house with none of the occupants any wiser as to his actions.

 

❖⚘❖

 

When the Katsukis woke the next morning, they knew the child standing up in his crib and crying desperately wasn’t the same child the had put to sleep the night before. How could they not? His hair was silver instead of black, his eyes blue instead of brown, and the bones in his face spoke of an ancestry different from theirs. Still, he cried and cried until his face turned blue and he began to choke, so Mama Katsuki picked him and hushed him as she would her own son, unable to leave any child to suffer.

Later that day they went looking for help from the old ladies who sat on the porches of the towns every day, knitting and gossiping. All it took was one look for them to diagnose the problem.

“You’ve got a changeling on your hands,” one said, her one good eye blinking as the other drooped closed.

“Your little baby was so pretty that it’s no wonder the Faeries took him,” another added. “Unusual, like. I bet the Faerie Queen would love to have a child like your Yuuri.”

“Is there any way get him back?” Papa Katsuki asked desperately.

Now an old woman who had gone totally blind spoke for the first time, her hands folded in her lap. “Of course there is- but it all depends on the whim of the Faeries. You can always try to give back the child you’ve received, but there’s no guarantee they’ll return yours as well.”

Mama Katsuki looked down at the face of the child in her arms. He looked so peaceful in sleep. “How? How can we return him?”

“The gates to the Faerie realm are many, but the ways for humans to access them are limited. Either leave the child by a lake or pond and wait for a Faerie to return for it, or expose the changeling to fire to spurr the Fey into action.”

“F-fire?” Mama Katsuki gasped, unconsciously clutching the baby a little closer to her chest. “H-how?”

“Just throwing them into the hearth works,” one suggested.

“No, no,” another contradicted. “First you need to rub their skin with oil or lard. It helps the heat spread.”

“When I was a young girl, my grandmother banished a changeling by placing it in a copper pot over a cooking fire,” a third added.

“Would you like help disposing of it?”

Papa Katsuki looked to his wife for help, and she looked down at the baby in her arms. She couldn’t imagine doing anything to hurt a sweet child like that, even if it wasn’t her own. “Ah, no, that’s fine. We’ll deal with it ourselves, won’t we, dear?”

Though he looked a little surprised, he nodded. “Yes, we can take care of it. Wouldn’t want to bother you good folks more than we already have. Let’s go home and…” he swallowed with difficulty “...decide how best to dispose of it.”

They headed for home as quickly as they could without seeming suspicious, Mama Katsuki clutching the child to her chest. He woke up halfway home and started crying again, and she shushed him by giving him a finger to suck on.

It was only when they were behind their own closed doors did the Katsukis finally allow themselves to relax.

“I can’t believe they recommended we burn a child,” Mama Katsuki said in disgust. “It’s barbaric! No child, even a child of the Fey, should have to go through that!”

“What can we do, though?” Papa Katsuki asked quietly. “They know we have the changeling child now, and they won’t rest until he’s gone. Both he and our family are in danger.”

She tucked the baby more securely in his bundle. “Then we protect him!”

“But how?”

“Lie, maybe- they won’t know the difference!”

Papa Katsuki laid a hand on his wife’s shoulder. “No one is going to be able to look at that child and think he belongs to us.”

Her shoulders sagged. “Then what?”

His gaze turned inward in thought. “Perhaps we should try the other way they suggested: leaving him by a lake.”

“No!” Mama Katsuki clutched the bundle tighter against her chest. “I won’t allow it! If we leave him, the wolves will get him for sure, not the Faeries!”

“Then we have one option left.” Papa Katsuki took a deep breath. “You know my employer is moving to another town closer to the city. Yesterday he asked me if I might want to move with him and keep working under him, instead of trying to find another job.”

“So what you’re saying is… we could relocate? So no one would know he was a changeling and we wouldn’t have to hurt him?” Mama Katsuki breathed.

“Yes, Hiroko,” her husband said, “but that means that we’ll never get Yuuri back. If the Faeries don’t know where to find us, they can’t give him back. Are you willing to take that risk?”

“Toshiya.” Mama Katsuki held her husband’s hand with one hand and brushed the wispy silver hair away from the changeling baby’s forehead with the other. “I despaired of seeing our Yuuri ever again the first moment I laid eyes on this babe. Our child is gone, and we can’t get him back. The only thing we can do now is fill the voids in our hearts with love for something else and try to heal, and who is more deserving of that love that this child, who was abandoned here by his own parents?”

“And that is your final decision?”

She nodded. “If our family has lost a child, then we will give this child a family.”

“Understood.” Papa Katsuki moved to the door and threw on his coat. “I will find my boss and tell him we’re coming with him.”

Nodding, Mama Katsuki placed the changeling baby down in Yuuri’s old crib. “I’ll pack and get Mari ready while you do that. Be careful,” she added when he opened the door. “Don’t let anyone stop you in the street.”

“This is a dangerous path we’re walking, Hiroko.”

“It is.” Mama Katsuki looked down at the sleeping silver-haired child. He stirred in his sleep and grasped onto her finger. “But it is the right one.”

 

☙☘❧

 

Phichit couldn't help but grin at the sight of his Lady Queen playing delightedly with the baby he had brought her. The tiny child - whose parents had called him Yuuri, if he remembered correctly - cooed delightedly at the shards of jewel-like magic she called up to amuse him, clapping his pudgy hands and squinting his oddly shaped eyes almost shut from the force of his laughter. King Yakov settled a large hand down on Phichit’s shoulder. He jumped and looked up at his King, trying not to let his fear show through his fond expression.

But all the Fey King said was, “Well done,” before he went to his wife and the child, a rare smile breaking out across his face.

“Where is our dear Viktor?” The Faerie Queen asked when she finally looked up from cooing over the babe. “He must meet his new companion! You there, nurse,” she called, gesturing to a sprite hovering nervously at the edge of the courtroom. “Fetch the Prince.”

“Um, My Queen, that’s, ah, that’s what I have been s-sent to t-tell you.” She shivered under the combined gazes of the King and Queen of the court. “The P-Prince is… missing?”

The atmosphere in the room switched from bubbly and warm to an icy chill in the time it would take to drop a pin. Standing haughtily, Queen Lilia dropped Yuuri into Phichit’s waiting arms without even checking to make sure he would catch him.

“What do you mean my son is missing?”

The sprite drew further back, as if the wall she was standing in front of could swallow her whole. “The Prince, he likes to slip away during his naptime, so we thought nothing of it and searched as usual, b-but it has been almost a day now and we’ve been unable to f-find him-”

She got no further than that in her explanation. With a flick of her hand, Queen Lilia engulfed her in a torrent of ice that solidified her body and made her a part of the living castle, one more face looking out from the ice of the throne room. Her gaze steely, the Queen looked about the room at all inside it.

“Get out of this room and search for my son. If he is not found by eventide, I will curse everyone in this castle!”

The room emptied out faster than Phichit could blink, even of the royal duo, leaving him behind to clutch at a confused baby with a feeling deep in his chest that something was very, very wrong.

 

It didn’t take long to discover what had happened. A nurse found the tiny child Phichit was supposed to have exchanged in the Royal Nursery, and he suddenly found himself in the center of a royal mess a common sprite like him had no desire to be tangled up in. Queen Lilia was the most angry, thrusting the child at him with little regard for its safety as she seethed in his face.

“What have you done? Where is my son?!”

“My lady, I don’t know-!” Phichit tried to protest, but the Queen cut him off with a slap to the face.

“This was the child you were supposed to exchange! Who did you take?!”

Desperately, Phichit looked down on the faces of the two children in his arms as if they could answer his questions, the changeling boy and the boy who was meant to be a changeling. “I don’t- the boy in the nursery, just like you said!”

“I said the _baby_ in the nursery, not the _boy_!” Queen Lilia made as to swipe at him again, but Phichit danced out of reach to prevent her from hitting the babies in his arms.

Casting a quick glance of desperation around, Phichit found a waiting nursery sprite with living flower vines erupting from the crook of her elbow and twining around her forearms to give the children to, and just in time; a collar of ice formed around his throat and then spread down his body, lifting him off the floor in a column of ice that left little more than his arms and head free. Queen Lilia stalked into his field of vision, and Phichit suddenly wondered how anyone could call her an ice Faerie when her eyes could burn with that much anger.

“What did he look like?” She asked very deliberately, holding a hand aloft that she slowly closed. At the same time, Phichit felt the ring around his neck begin to tighten. “The boy you took? What did he look like? What color were his eyes?”

“I don’t know- I didn’t see his eyes!” Phichit gasped. “Please, Lady Queen! I swear I don’t know! I just took the boy, like you said to! Please-!”

She snapped her fingers, and a spike of ice pressed into the side of Phichit’s throat, where his jugular ran, effectively cutting off his babble. “What color was his hair?”

“I don’t-! Lady Queen, I can’t breathe-!”

“WHAT COLOR WAS HIS HAIR!?!?”

“Silver!” Phichit finally managed to gasp out, his vision swimming from lack of air.

Abruptly, the ice collar holding him aloft vanished, leaving Phichit to crash down to the unforgiving frozen floor. Gasping full lungfuls of air, he grasped at his throat, but he was only given a few moments to recover before the Queen snapped her fingers again and a guard dragged him to his feet.

“Take me to the place where you performed the exchange,” she ordered, then turned and pointed at the sprite Phichit had given the children to earlier. “You come, too. Now!”

Phichit had never called up a gate so fast in his life.

 

❖⚘❖

 

The changeling baby wouldn’t stop crying the entire time the Katsukis were hurriedly packing up their few belongings, his stark blue eyes red from the force of his sobs. Mama Katsuki tried to quiet him, but she couldn’t spare the time away from her tasks, so she eventually just dumped him in Mari’s lap and told her to quiet him as best she could as she returned to packing their cookware. The tears in little Mari’s eyes when she finally understood that her little brother wouldn’t be coming home, that this was the child they had been left with in Yuuri’s place, almost broke Mama Katsuki’s resolve, but she just took a breath and kissed the tops of both their heads before going back to her work. When she checked in on them later, Mari’s face was still tear-stained, but she was stroking the tuft of silver hair on his head and whispering softly to him.

“Can you tell me what your name is?”

“Vic! Vic!” The baby hicupped sporadically, then began to cry again. “Maaaaam!!!”

“I know, your Mama isn’t here,” she said soothingly. “My little brother isn’t either. He was called Yuuri. I wish he could come back to us.”

Surprisingly, the baby’s cries softened at that. “Yuu… Yuu?”

“Yuuri. Yuu-ri,” she corrected him, and the baby reached up to grab at her nose.

“Yuu?”

“No, not me. I’m Mari. Ma-ri. Can you say it?”

“Ma… Ma…” He started choking up again, the similar sound obviously bringing up a connection. “Maaaaam! Maaaaaaam!!!”

“Hey! Hey!” Mari shushed him, and when he calmed down, she tried again. “Not Mam, Mari. Ma-ri. Can you say that? Ma-ri?”

“Ri?” The baby asked confusedly, blinking up at her with wide eyes, then breaking into the first smile Mama Katsuki had seen on him yet. “Ri! Ri!”

“Yes, Mari!” Mari smiled through the fresh wave of tears. That was exactly how Yuuri used to look at her. “I’m Mari. What’s your name?”

A frown creased the baby’s forehead, as if he could actually understand what she was saying. “Vic… Vic…”

“Vic? Are you called Vic?”

“Vic…ta!” The baby announced proudly, his tiny fists curling up. “Vic-ta! Vic-ta!”

“Victor? Is that your name?”

Both Mari and the baby jumped at the sound of Mama Katsuki’s voice as she moved into the room. Jumping to her feet, Mari clutched the child to her tiny torso.

“I didn’t-! Mama, I wasn’t trying to-!”

“No, it’s okay,” Mama Katsuki smiled through the pain in her stomach as she moved to take the baby back. Seeing Mari and the changeling like this only served to heighten the feeling of loss. “Is your name Victor, little Faerie boy?”

“Vic-ta!” The baby proclaimed proudly, grabbing a handful of Mama Katsuki’s hair and giving it a sharp tug.

“No, Victor! That’s Mama’s.” She pulled her hair from Victor’s grasp and held him out to look at him. “You’re a spirited one, aren’t you?”

He responded by blowing a bubble and giggling. “Mama!”

The word punched a hole in Mama Katsuki’s gut, but she smiled through the pain and held the baby close again. “Oh, Victor. If you have no Mama, I suppose this old lady will do.”

“Victor?” Papa Katsuki chose that exact moment to poke his head around the doorframe. “Who’s Victor?”

“This little one. He finally spoke.” Mama Katsuki tucked him against her hip as she turned to speak with her husband. “Have you made the arrangements?”

He nodded. “The cart is coming in an hour. And not a moment too soon; I saw some of our neighbors acting suspiciously when I passed. I suspect the news of the changeling has already spread, and I wouldn’t be surprised if they came knocking on our door before dawn. Have you finished packing?”

“Almost. Mari, come help Mama with something?”

“Yes, Mama.”

In an hour, they had all their possessions piled in the center of their one room hut, ready to make their escape. The cart came under the cover of dawning twilight, and when it stopped in front of their house Mama and Papa Katsuki went about moving everything into the back of the cart with the help of the man who was to drive them while Mari kept Victor swaddled and quiet, his distinctive hair and features kept bundled and close to her chest. With as few possessions as they had, it didn’t take long; within ten minutes, the entirety of their lives was in the back of the cart and they were trundling out of town.

Each clop of the horse’s hooves sounded like the the crack of a gun in the early evening stillness. Mama Katsuki caught sight of the glint of a farm tool in somebody’s grasp around the corner of a building, and she leaned forward to speak to their driver.

“Is there any chance you could go any faster?”

He glanced back at her with an unreadable expression, then flicked the reins. The horse started trotting a little faster, but not enough to calm Mama Katsuki’s heart rate when they passed a man carrying a torch and clearly heading to where they used to live. Quickly, she tugged her hood lower on her brow and urged her husband to do the same. When she pulled Mari’s down as well, the sleeping Victor woke and started crying.

“Shh, Victor,” Mari shushed without thinking, and the man driving the cart looked back, startled.

“I thought your son’s name was Yuuri.”

For a second, the family in the back of the cart froze, then Victor chose that exact moment to scream loudly, kicking and thrashing so the cloth Mama Katsuki had wrapped around his head slipped off. When the moonlight glinted off his silver hair, the driver caught his breath.

“Changeling…”

Mama Katsuki quickly grabbed Victor and wrapped him up again, shushing his cries. Desperation in his eyes, Papa Katsuki leaned forward and grasped the driver’s shoulder.

“Please. We’re trying to do the right thing. They’ll kill him… kill us. Please.”

After a few moments of agonizing confliction, the driver’s eyes cleared and he nodded, snapping the reins and forcing the horse into a canter, taking them swiftly through the town and away from the gathering mob.

“God help your souls.”

 

☙☘❧

 

Phichit snuck along the road that led to the house he had just recently stolen a child from, his magic allowing him to gracefully blend in with the light thrown haphazardly across the packed dirt from the windows of the houses that lined the street. Behind him, Queen Lilia stalked forward with her retinue of one, the terrified sprite holding both babies, not bothering to hide her Fey aura. If any human thought to step out into the street or simply look out their window and catch a glance of her, she sent wafts of chilling air to dissuade them. Windows all along the path slammed shut to keep it out, despite the fact that it was still early autumn. Some way behind her marched King Yakov, his expressionless facade more terrifying than her violently visible anger.

“Here,” Phichit breathed, coming to a stop in front of a familiar hut. All the windows were closed tightly, and no light peeked out from underneath the door. Had they already fallen asleep?

He conjured up a small ball of light and sent it to tap on the window, perhaps to coax it open, but before he could use his usual subtle magic Queen Lilia raised a hand and the entire door iced over, the wood splintering under the destructive force. A boulder, unearthed from the ground courtesy of King Yakov, smashed through the weakened door, leaving a gaping hole that the royal couple quickly hurried through. Phichit exchanged a single terrified glance with the sprite with vines twining around her forearms, but she only ducked her head and pulled the two babies closer to her chest.

A earth-shattering scream ripped through the air, and both Phichit and the sprite dashed inside the hut after their King and Queen. Queen Lilia screamed and fought as King Yakov steadfastly held her back, raging against the emptiness of the room they had found.

“You!” She screamed, pointing an accusing finger at Phichit. “You brought us to the wrong house! You conspired to kidnap our son all along! I sentence you to death! Execution! Execu-!”

King Yakov slapped a hand over her mouth. “Is or is this not the place you switched the children?”

“It… it is!” Phichit stuttered, trembling but more afraid to run away than to stand and face his punishment. “They lived here, I swear it! I watched this house for many months! Every night! I’d know it anywhere!”

With a blast of ice, Queen Lilia threw her husband off and grabbed Phichit by the throat. “Then where are they? Where is my son?!”

“I- I d-don’t know!”

Her gaze snapped icy sparks, and she began to tighten her grip. “Lies!”

Phichit’s eyes bugged out of his sockets as he felt the life being slowly choked out of him. He gasped without air, then the pressure suddenly vanished as King Yakov towered over his wife with a terrible expression and fists covered with live stone.

“You would dare cast magic against me, woman?!”

Dropping Phichit on the ground, where he scrambled backwards until his back was pressed against the wall next to the cowering sprite, Queen Lilia spun around to confront her husband.

“Yes, I dare! I dare when the life of our son is at risk! Our own flesh and blood, our _Prince_ , Yakov! Or have you forgotten that?”

His eyes darkened. “I think it is you who have forgotten, Lilia. Forgotten the duties that lay with us as rulers of the Fey, that is. We must be ever vigilant of our reputations.”

Her jaw dropped. “Are you saying that we should just forget that this happened? That our son is _missing_?!”

“I’m saying that you should conduct yourself in a manner befitting a Queen such as yourself.”

“Manner befitting a Queen-! How should I act, then?” she spat at him. “Dab daintily at my eyes? Wait for someone else to do the job for me? I _bore_ that child, Yakov, carried his essence inside my womb and felt the pain his birth caused me! I will act in the manner befitting any mother in this world or the next!”

“You have another son, do you not?” He snapped back, jerking his head to the Fey baby in the sprite’s arms.

“A magicless, useless disappointment of a boy-! Oh, don’t look at me like that, Yakov, you think it of him too! We wanted that human for our Viktor! What are we to do with him now? How can we take him back if we can’t find the family he was taken from?”

Yakov’s eyebrows raised. “Was that your plan? Go back on our pledge as Faerie to cherish any human child we decide to raise and leave the Fey for the humans? Equal exchange, a fair deal?”

“Of course not; we perform the exchange that was supposed to happen! Switch Viktor for the spare!”

“Lilia.” Yakov closed his eyes briefly, allowing a flash of pain to cross his face, but when his eyes opened again, his facade was once again stone. “I understand what you’re saying, I really do, but we must abide by the rules we set in place. If the family does not give the changeling back, we cannot take it from them by force. I’m sorry, but… I’m afraid our son belongs to the humans now.”

Queen Lilia’s knees buckled, sending her crashing to the floor. “No… no…” She whispered, her hand covering her mouth as tears leaked from the corners of her eyes. Phichit looked away, afraid to witness the moment of private weakness. “My boy… he can’t be gone…”

When King Yakov went to place a comforting hand on her shaking shoulder, she shook it off and glared at him with hatred. “This is all your fault!”

“My fault? How is it my fault!? This is your fault!”

“My fault! If you had disciplined him better, I wouldn’t have had to-!”

“Well, if you had kept a better eye on him he wouldn’t have even needed discipline-!”

“If you had chosen more competent staff, I wouldn’t have had to try-!”

“I could have chosen better if you hadn’t scared them all away-!”

Ice crackled around Queen Lilia’s fists as she stood, and the ground around King Yakov began to vibrate with his anger. Before the couple could come to magical blows so powerful they would blow away the entire village, including the two helpless sprites pressed against the back wall of the hut, Phichit dove between the two of them with his hands held aloft.

“Wait, please! It’s neither of your faults! It was just an accident!”

He immediately regretted his decision when both cold glares turned to rest on him.

“That’s right,” Queen Lilia said with new dark life in her eyes. “It’s not our fault. It’s your fault.”

Phichit’s breath caught in his throat. “M-My Lady?”

“You stole our son from us,” she crooned, fingers softly tickling his chin as she moved in closer, her soft tone at complete odds with the words she was saying. “And I’m sure you know the punishment for such treason at our court, don’t you, Phichit dear?”

Fear froze Phichit’s brain function; he could only babbly desperately and incoherently. “Please, My Lady, it was an accident! I can make it right! I can find him again-!”

“I think we all know that’s impossible now, Phichit dear,” she smiled, tapping the side of his jaw with a long finger. “My Victor is lost to me, and I think you know what you deserve for that. An execu-”

“No.”

Suddenly, Phichi found himself grabbed out of Queen Lilia’s arms and placed in the custody of King Yakov’s stone-covered hand. He gasped, his heartbeat fluttering wildly. Was he to be forgiven?

“Does he not deserve an execution?” Queen Lilia seethed, to which King Yakov shook his head.

“I am a merciful King. He did not do this willfully. He will not be executed.”

“Oh, thank you, Great and Powerful King Yakov, thank you for sparing me-!” Phichit started to babble, but the King silenced him with a glare.

“Instead, his punishment will be to be bound into the depths of a great oak tree until such time as I or my progenity sees fit to release him.”

All of Phichit’s thanks dried up in his mouth. Bound in the bowels of a tree, for all of conceivable eternity? That was even worse than an execution! He tried to protest, but before he could the ground came up over him and sealed him off from the rest of the world.

The sprite holding the two babies shrunk ever further back against the wall, as if she could melt into it and hide from the gazes of the royal Fey. She averted her eyes as Queen Lilia turned away from King Yakov and wiped tears from her eyes.

“Do not think that I will be able to lightly forget what has transpired this night, Yakov,” she said stiffly.

“Nor shall I,” he rumbled. “I doubt I shall ever be able to trust you again, after you raised your magic against me.”

“Like I was the only one with magic on their fists!” She snapped back, spinning around to glare at her husband. “I am referring to how you chose you Kingship and your reputation over your love for me and our family!”

His teeth snapped together with an audible click. “I am not is a position where I can make decisions lightly, Lilia! I must do what is best for the majority, not just me!”

“Or your own wife, apparently.”

King Yakov looked like he was about to reply, then his face closed off and he took a step back.

“Maybe… maybe it’s time. For us to stop the circuit. To become hosts. Individually.”

This drew the sprite’s attention. Every year, the Faeries of the court traveled in a circuit, spending each season at a different palace. Of course, not all Fey were invited on the circuit, but those that were guarded the right with feverish intensity and those that weren’t regarded them with a severe jealousy whenever the circuit passed through their territory. The King and and Queen of the court were at the center of the circuit! For them to abandon it…!

Casting a deliberate glance behind her, Queen Lilia smoothed the folds of her gossamer gown. “This isn’t the first time you’ve thought about this, is it, Yakov.”

The words were not a question, nor were King Yakov’s when he answered. “Nor the first time it has entered your mind.”

“We are not what we once were,” the Queen muttered low, her eyes focusing somewhere in the distance. “Being a ruler strips a person of what they are and replaces it with what others think they should be. I had hoped our _son_ ” - the word was said with a withering bite - “might be able to take over for us soon, but now there is no chance of that.”

“We can split the duties,” King Yakov offered. “One of us stays in the Summer Palace, the other in the Winter, and any disputes that take place in that season can be settled by the ruler of that time. That way, we each get half a year of leadership and half a year of leisure.”

The Queen let out a dainty snort. “Are you sure you can handle settling disputes without me?”

King Yakov’s eyes flashed in response. “Funny, I could ask you the same thing.”

They glared at each other for a few more moments before looking away, and King Yakov held out his hand. “Dissolve our marriage?”

For a moment, it looked like Queen Lilia was going to hesitate, to change her mind, but then she squared her shoulders and placed her hand in King Yakov’s. A dark light started to glow around their joined hands, and the sprite jumped forward before they could complete the ritual.

“Wait! You can’t dissolve your marriage! You two are the face of the Faerie realm! If you don’t stay together, how can the rest of us hold high our heads?”

Both the King and Queen leveled withering stares at her, which caused her to instinctively shrink back.

“And-d w-what about-t the ch-children?” She stuttered, holding the two babies up in front of her like a shield.

“The children?” Queen Lilia cast them an appraising glance, then turned away. “I don’t care. Leave them, if you like. I doubt I can stand to look at either of them.”

The sprite clutched them closer to her chest. “Even the changeling?”

She cut off at the Queen’s harsh glance. “Do you dare question _me_ , lowly servant? Be silent, unless you want to go the same way as him!”

She gestured at the lump in the floor where Phichit had once been lively and loud, but King Yakov caught her hand.

“Wait. She speaks sense, however harsh, and that is an admirable quality.” He nodded at the sprite. “Tell me, what is your name?”

The sprite shook under his stone gaze. “M-Mila, my King.”

“Mila, how would you like a place on the circuit? Permanently?”

Mila’s jaw dropped open; an opportunity like that was one most low Fey like her could only dream of getting, but there was no way it didn’t have a catch, not when it was presented like this. “M-me?! But I… I… why?”

“As compensation for looking after them as they travel the circuit,” he elaborated with a jerk of his head to the children in her arms. “Perhaps we are rash in deciding to dissolve our marriage, but I think we are justifiable in our wish to stop the circuit and exist separately from one another. The children must be raised as our own, even if one is a human and the other is a failed changeling, so they must take the circuit. Would you become their caretaker, and ensure their safety when we cannot?”

It was tempting, and every fiber of Mila’s body screamed at her to accept her King’s offer, but her heart sunk when she looked down at the two babies clutched in her grasp. She was a weak Fey, her quiet magic of causing flowers to bloom from unexpected crevices useless in either defense or offense. There was no way she could have the power to do what he asked. With a heavy heart, she looked back up at King Yakov to reject his offer, but froze when she saw his expression.

He wasn’t asking her.

“I would be honored to, my King,” she gasped, and King Yakov nodded.

“Excellent. I shall take my leave then… and retire to the Summer Palace. Lilia, I assume you would like to take charge of winter?”

With a tight expression, Queen Lilia nodded, and King Yakov responded by pulling Phichit from the ground, though he was still encased in unbreakable stone bonds, and disappearing through a gate he quickly produced. At the last second, he hesitated, looking like he was going to say something more, but then the gate closed, leaving behind Queen Lilia, Mila, and the two babies.

After letting a breath waft out of her on a sigh, Queen Lilia called up her own gate and gestured to Mila. “Come.”

Mila stepped toward the gate, no small measure of trepidation still curdling her stomach sour. “...My Lady? May I ask a question?”

For the first time, Queen Lilia met Mila’s gaze directly, and instead of the blue fire from before, all she could see was aching tiredness. “What is it?”

“If I am to take care of these children… what does that entail? Am I their bodyguard? Their tutor? Their mother-?”

“I am their mother!” Queen Lilia suddenly snapped, surprising Mila with her vehemence, then her shoulders sagged. “I… I just cannot look at them yet, not so soon after… I must grieve first. You will be their caretaker. They will have the same upbringing as any other Fey children, no special treatment.”

 _No special treatment._ So the children were not intended to take Prince Viktor’s place in the politics of the court, just in the hearts. Mila nodded.

“Is that all?” The Queen asked, her posture reeking of tiredness again. Not that Mila could blame her; the woman had lost both her husband and her son on the same day.

After a brief hesitation, Mila ventured, “If I may be permitted to ask one further question?”

Passing a hand in front of her eyes, the Queen sighed. “What is it?”

“The… Fey child? What is his name?”

“I don’t know, and I don’t care.” The Queen turned her back to Mila. “Call him Yuuri, same as the other. After all, his purpose was intended to be his replacement.”

Then she stepped through the gate, leaving it open for Mila to follow her. Before she did, however, she looked down at the two children, the black-haired Yuuri and the Fey child who was just starting to develop tufts of blond on his scalp.

“I can’t call you the same name,” she whispered to them. “We’ll never be able to tell you apart. You, little one… I’ll call you Yuri. It’s just different enough.”

Little Yuri woke up and started to wail, reaching desperately for the edge of Mila’s sleeve to stuff in his mouth. His cries woke Yuuri as well, who started to whimper when he recognized his surroundings.

“Mama? Mama!”

“Shh,” Mila shushed both of them, stepping towards the gate. “Don’t cry; Auntie Mila is here now to take care of you. You must be hungry. Let’s get you both some warm milk.”

She stepped through the gate and it closed behind her with a barely audible pop, the two children never to be seen again in the human realm- at least, not for a very long time.


	2. Broken Ice

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Grinding to a halt as the music cut off without coming to a logical end, he dug his blades into the ice and looked up to the sky, his arms down and slightly forward at his sides with his hands splayed, palms up.
> 
> Somehow, this time felt… different. The ice had always called to him, but this time its siren song was harder to ignore. What could have changed? What was drawing him?
> 
> Did it have something to do with his Fey blood?
> 
> He was so absorbed in his thoughts that he heard the warning back from Makkachin too late. A crack echoed out over the ice, and Victor, shocked, looked around for the source. Was that a gunshot? Was someone shooting at him?
> 
> At the second crack, he correctly identified the source and looked down at his feet. During his blind dance, he had ended up directly in the center of the pond, where the ice was weakest, and a large crack was spreading across the surface underneath his feet. Panicked bile rising in his throat, Victor tried to push himself off the weak surface, but it was too late and the ice shattered beneath his feet, plunging him into the freezing water below.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For returning readers, this chapter too was edited and overhauled, so you might notice some differences. After this initial update when all four chapters are going up at once, updates will be every Sunday (skipping this next one).

❖⚘❖

 

All the legends said that Fey children were rare, and thus highly prized. If so, Victor always wondered what he had done wrong to make his parents want to exchange him for the Katsuki boy. It must have been something terrible, to make them hate him that much. Maybe he had been a rambunctious child, or one that never minded. Or perhaps they had done it to try and protect him from something, something that couldn’t touch him in the human realm. In his most secret dreams, that was what he hoped, that his real parents really had loved him and not abandoned him here in favor of another. He knew it wasn’t likely, but he still hoped.

Victor had spent his entire life knowing he was different from both his family and the people around him. His now parents - as he referred to the Katsukis in his head, since calling them his “fake parents” felt rude considering how much love they showed him - were very careful to let him know from a young age that although he was different from their family, they accepted him no matter where he had come from. They were also careful to instruct him in what to say if anyone ever asked why he looked so unlike the rest of their family, with their Asian heritage that clashed with his silver hair and sea-blue eyes.

The official story was that a family had died of a sickness in the village they had lived in before, leaving no one but their infant son behind, and the Katsuki’s had taken in the boy since they had just lost a son about the same age. It held just enough truth not to seem suspicious, and they’d made it in this new town - a larger place, easier to get lost in and harder to attract unwanted attention - on the lie without any suspicions for almost twenty years now.

At least, not enough suspicion to cause them problems.

Victor shouldered the door open, his arms full of snowy wood. His Mama Katsuki looked up from the hearth when she felt the cold hit her and shivered, menacing him with the spoon she had been cooking with.

“Close the door behind you, young man! And don’t you dare track any mud on my nice clean floor!”

“Yes, Mama,” Victor laughed, stomping the muddy snow from his boots and depositing the firewood next to the stove to dry before darting over to press a quick kiss to her temple.

“Oh, stop that, you.” Mama Katsuki’s frown dissolved and she held up the spoon for him to taste. “Check the seasoning for me?”

Victor blew on the spoon, then carefully allowed it to slip past his lips. “Hmmm…” he frowned as he thought.

“There’s a problem, isn’t there?” Mama Katsuki fretted, dropping the spoon back into the soup to try some herself.

“There definitely is,” Victor said as seriously as he could, then broke into a smile. “It’s too delicious for me to give you any kind of valuable input.”

She flushed, then smacked him in the arm. “Get out of the kitchen if you’re not going to be useful! Mari! Get in here and help me!”

Laughing, Victor darted out of the kitchen and into the sitting room where Papa Katsuki was reading his newspaper just as Mari strode in to take his place. It only took her a few seconds to diagnose what Victor had failed to taste. “More pepper, less parsley. And throw in another pinch of salt in if we have any left.”

“Oh, you think so too? I wanted to make sure I wasn’t the only one…”

Papa Katsuki looked up when Victor settled down in one of the chairs in front of the fire. “How’d it go today?”

Pulling at the laces of his boots, Victor said with a grimace, “Same as usual. More temporary work, but still nothing permanent. Even if they don’t say it out loud, no one wants to take on an apprentice that looks like a-”

Papa Katsuki silenced him with a look as delicate footsteps pattered down the stairs and entered the sitting room. When they’d first moved into the house, it had been a large building that they had only rented one of several rooms in for their whole family, but as time had passed, more and more people had moved out, not fond of the stringent landlord, until the Katsuki’s had been able to buy the whole property and manage it themselves. Now it was a bed and breakfast coupled with a long-term boarding establishment that Mama Katsuki blissfully kept running like the well-oiled gears of a pocket watch. It was both a second income to help the family and a way for Mama Katsuki, and Mari when she wasn’t working seasonally, to keep busy. They were still a far cry from wealthy, but they were no longer as destitute as they once were.

The woman who had been staying with them a few months flashed them a smile as she darted out the door, and Victor and Papa Katsuki relaxed again when it closed behind her.

“How many time have we told you, Victor? You must be more careful!” He scolded gently, unfolding his paper to read another section.

“Sorry, Papa.” Victor pulled a face. “But it’s true. Just about the only people that might take me on is a troubadour group.”

Papa Katsuki looked up from his newspaper with a start. “You haven’t been considering that kind of work, have you?”

“Well…” Victor hesitated. “The idea of traveling far away doesn’t appeal to me, but it may be my best option. I could dance, Papa. They’d be happy to have someone who looks like me on a stage.”

“Hmm.” He fixed Victor with an unmovable stare. “It would break your mother’s heart.”

“I know,” Victor sighed.

And that was the only reason he hadn’t done it already. He couldn’t do that to Mama, not after what she’d already lost. To this day, she still set an extra spot at the table at every meal for the son that had been stolen from her, as if he had only been held up somewhere and could arrive any second. It was a place next to Victor’s own, and he always felt a strange lump in his throat whenever he looked at it.

But where else, looking like he did, could he find any work? Victor looked human enough to pass as one at first glance, but there was just enough of an ethereal aura around him to make any person who wasn’t used to it unsettled.

His thoughts were derailed by a loud bark, and Victor looked up to see that in letting the woman out, the open door had also let his dog in. A wide grin on his face, he dropped to his knees and held out his arms.

“Makka! Come here, girl!”

Tongue lolling, Makkachin jumped up into Victor’s arms and barked into his ear before licking it. Grinning, Victor ruffled his dog’s fur and pressed lots of kisses to the end of his nose.

“Who’s a good girl? You are! You’re a good girl!”

“You spoil that dog too much,” Papa Katsuki observed from behind his newspaper, but Victor just grinned and pulled the energetic dog into his lap.

“On the contrary. I don’t think I spoil her enough.” Victor pressed one last kiss to his dog’s head before standing up. “Come on, Makka. Let’s get you upstairs before Mama hears you.”

As if on cue, Mama Katsuki’s voice floated out of the kitchen. “Victor, is that Makkachin? She better not be trying to get in the kitchen again!”

Mama Katsuki loved Makkachin, as did all the members of the Katsuki family, but she had put her foot down about having her in the kitchen a long time ago after the infamous Cast Iron Stew Incident. Ever since then, she ate all her meals in the room Victor shared with one of their male tenants, and slept there most nights too.

“I’m putting her upstairs,” he called as he started tugging her collar towards the staircase.

“I don’t understand why you keep her in your room all the time, Victor! She’s a working dog; shouldn’t you treat her like one?”

“It’s too cold for her to be outside of nights like this!” Victor succeeded in getting Makkachin to the top of the stairs, then closed her in his communal room. “Sorry,” he whispered to her mournful expression, “but you know the rules.”

Makkachin had been a gift for Victor when he was in his early teens, a little less than ten years prior. It was custom, he had learned, to give young boys a dog to raise to teach them responsibility, from training them to feeding them and cleaning up after them. Sometimes, in his most secret of thoughts, he likened the practice to the same kind of logic the Fey used when they took changelings as companions for young members of the court.

Mari was setting the table for their family and the four guests who had elected to eat with them that night when Victor came back down into the sitting room. The meal was simple but hearty, a stew with a lots of vegetables to hide the fact that it didn’t have much meat and bread on the side for dipping. When Mama Katsuki stood up to clear the plates, Victor looked to his father.

“Papa, is it alright if I go to the pond tonight?”

He looked up in surprise. “Isn’t it too cold?”

“No, it’s the perfect temperature! It’s been cold for just long enough that the whole thing will be frozen over! It hasn’t snowed for a few days too, so I won’t have to clean it off. Besides, you know the cold doesn’t bother me like it bothers-”

A cough from the stove stopped Victor, and he flushed as he quickly changed the end of his sentence.

“-Mari. Mari hates the cold. I don’t.” He winced at the awkwardness.

With a sigh, Papa Katsuki stood up from the table. “If you get all your chores done. And take Makka with you. Understood?”

“Understood!” Victor quickly jumped up from the table and threw on his jacket, starting on his evening chores. He had already done a few of them earlier, like carrying in the firewood, but he still had to draw up water from the well and bring it inside for Mama Katsuki to use the next day and a few other things.

After rushing through his chores, Victor grabbed the bowl of leftover stew Mama Katsuki had left out despite her complaints about spoiling a working dog and ran up the stairs two at a time. Makkachin’s ears perked up when he pushed open the door to the room and she bounded towards him, her nose sniffing the air.

“Sit,” he said sternly, and Makkachin dropped down onto her haunches. “Good girl!”

He placed the bowl on the floor and she whined a little, her posture straining, until he sat down in front of her and snapped his fingers.

“You can eat it now, Makka.”

With a happy bark, Makkachin wolfed down the food with a surprising delicacy for a dog of her size. After she licked the bowl clean, she looked up at Victor again, her tongue lolling out of her mouth when he scratched behind her floppy ears.

“We’re going out tonight, Makka,” he crooned happily, fluffing her ears when she sat up straighter. “Yes, we are! We get to go out and play in the snow tonight! How about that?”

At her happy answering bark, Victor pulled a box out from under his bed and opened it with a sense of reverence. A few years ago, when he’d finally been able to start saving his own money from the few odd jobs he could find, this was one of the first purchases he had made. After hearing tales of people from far away lands who danced on the ice in boots made of tight leather with metal blades attached to the bottom, he knew that he had to have some for himself. It was difficult, and he’d had to work with both the local cobbler and the local blacksmith to get a pair that finally met his vision. When he’d first put them on, he felt like a child learning to take his first steps again, but after years of practicing every night he could, he’d gotten good at it. The ice sang to him like it was in his blood, begging him to mar its sleek surface with the blades of his skates, and he was helpless to resist.

“Come on, Makka,” he said, jumping to his feet and pulling on his coat and the woolen mittens Mama Katsuki had knitted him. “Let’s go!”

 

☙☘❧

 

At the very fringes of his earliest memories, Yuuri remembered his human mother. Or, rather, he thought he did. Her face had faded so much that he doubted he could recognize what she looked like anymore, but still he remembered her voice, weaving stories of magic around his cradle as he slept, and the way her very presence always seemed envelop him in warmth. She was a far cry from his Faerie mother, who was cold and distant when she deigned to give him any attention at all. The person he could most compare her to was Mila, the flower sprite who acted as his and his brother’s guardian when they were younger, and had continued to shower them with as much affection as an impatient and easily bored Fey could once they had outgrown her.

Yuuri’s brother was a few years younger than him, though it was impossible to pinpoint the exact amount of time because all records of Yuuri’s birth had been lost when he had been taken from the human world, and as far as he knew, there had never been any records made of his brother’s birth. His name was also Yuri, a fact the child Yuri had loved but the surly teenaged one hated, tired of living in Yuuri’s shadow. Not that his shadow was very big; as a human, even one who had grown up among the Fey and picked up on a lot of their tricks, Yuuri was largely powerless. Lacking any innate magic, which was a particular form of magic that a Faerie could use instinctively from birth without any teaching. Anybody could learn any kind of magic, but innate magic was always the easiest and strongest magic a Faerie could possess.  

Perhaps that was another reason why Yuri hated Yuuri now. He was considered a freak because he had been born without any innate predisposition to any form of magic, so he and Yuuri were in the same situation of powerlessness. But while Yuuri was a human living in the Fey world, Yuri was a Fey by birth. Yuuri had accepted his situation a long time ago, but Yuri was still fighting against it with everything his frail body possessed. Anything Yuuri tried to do to help only made him angrier, so he had eventually stopped trying.

On the surface, anyway. That was why Yuuri was skipping the Feast of the Midwinter. It lasted several days anyway, and Yuuri had already made an appearance, though his brother hadn’t, so he was allowed some time away from the crowds. Despite having grown up in the court, Yuuri could still feel all the Fey watching him all the time, silently comparing him to the Prince who had been lost when he’d come to them.

Yuuri’s werehound, Vicchan, thundered through the perpetual snowy forests of the winter season with Yuuri on his back, examining a small totem tied to his wrist. It had a strand of Yuri’s hair in it, and would glow if they got close to him. He’d already visited Yuri’s normal haunts and hadn’t been able to find his brother, however, so he steered Vicchan towards a place where he could always find solace when his mind was troubled.

When the light of the moon shone blue around them instead of pale white, Yuuri slowed Vicchan and dismounted into the snow. Vicchan immediately sneezed and shook out his fur until he shrunk down to the size of a puppy, then nosed at Yuuri’s boot with a whine.

“Alright,” Yuuri sighed, picking up his werehound and tucking him inside his jacket. “You’re such a baby when you’re small, aren’t you?”

Vicchan responded with a yip and a lick under Yuuri’s jaw before he snuggled down into the warmth provided by his body heat. Not that Yuuri could complan much; it was very cold, and Vicchan’s fur against his chest was soft and warm.

“Still nothing,” Yuuri murmured to himself, glancing down at the amulet tied to his wrist as he picked his way to where the blueness of the light was more intense. It was one of his favorite places to go when he wanted to be alone and think about things, and it was easily accessible from all four seasons within a few hours’ ride, because it was located in the center of the circle they traveled for the circuit.

Soon the blue light got too intense for Yuuri to look at it directly, and he closed his eyes, trusting his feet to take him where he needed to be. After a few steps, the dazzling light faded, recognizing that he meant no harm, and Yuuri opened his eyes to see that he had been transported out of winter and into the ungrowing unlife of the connection of the four seasons. A bottomless pool of blue-tinted water stretched down as far as he could see in front of him, and the bare branches of skeleton trees stretched their fingertips down to brush the still surface of the water.

Unlife was peaceful, Yuuri thought as he sat down on one of the bare banks. Beautiful, even. Most people didn’t understand.

Now that it was no longer cold, Vicchan poked his head out from under Yuuri’s chin and yipped to be released, so he let the puppy-sized werehound out to amble along the edge of the pond. Selecting a smooth stone at random from the rocky bank he was sitting on, Yuuri flicked his wrist and sent it spinning across the surface of the pond. Once, twice, three times, four times, it skipped across the surface with a spark of blue magic before it sank down into the depths of the pool. Yuuri selected a second stone and was about to throw it when something caught his eye.

From each point of the stone’s impact against the pool’s surface, a small patch of ice was growing. Yuuri frowned; that was unexpected. He stood up to get a better look as the thin skims of ice started to cover more of the pool’s surface, connecting when they touched each other and spreading outwards. There was something moving under the ice… or perhaps inside it, like a reflection in a mirror. At first, it was impossible to tell what the dark shape was, but as the ice spread, the image grew clearer.

Yuuri sucked in a startled breath. It was the shape of a man, and he was dancing.

 

❖⚘❖

 

Victor dropped to the ground next to the frozen pond and pulled off his boots, quickly replacing them with his skates. Makkachin danced around in the snow as he laced them up tightly, barking at every flake that fluttered down near her nose. Just to confuse her, Victor picked up a handful and scattered it in her direction, and she came to a full stop and sneezed as the powdery snow hit her head. Laughing, Victor stood up and picked his way carefully past the treacherous snowbanks to the bare ice of the pond.

Sometimes, he had a crowd that would come watch him skate, but today he was alone. Victor chalked that up to the weather; Papa Katsuki was right, it really was too cold for any ordinary person to be doing this, but Victor wasn’t an ordinary person. He could comfortably skate in this weather without a jacket, but chose not to in case someone saw him. The ice was in his blood.

He started out simple with a few sweeping loops of the pond to test the surface of the ice, and mapped out the rough spots to avoid later. The center of the pond was the most dangerous spot, since it wasn’t the coldest nights of the year yet and the pond froze from the outside in, so he avoided that too, simply skating in the ring between the snowbanks and the center. It looked solid enough to him, but after a scare a few years ago he wasn’t about to take any chances.

Makkachin tried to bound out onto the ice after him, but her paws only scrabbled against the slick surface until she went down on the ice with a bark. Laughing at the sight of his dog trying to stand up, Victor reversed his direction so he was going backwards in front of her.

Leaning forward, Victor clapped his hands encouragingly. “Come on, Makka! You can do it!”

She tried to run after him, but only succeeded in falling again and spinning around on the ice. With a sad woof, she abandoned the ice in favor of running around the perimeter of the pond. Victor reversed his direction again so they were going the same way, then started tracing lazy figure eights onto the ice.

He’d heard stories that in places where skating was more common, people were focused on more rigid practices, like speed and jumping distance. Victor drew himself in and jumped straight up, getting a few rotations in before he crashed back down onto the ice. Wincing, he picked himself back up and brushed the snow from his backside before starting on another set of figure eights. He didn’t just want to skate on the ice; he wanted to dance on it.

Raising his arms, Victor drew himself into a spin, carefully lifting one leg off the ice. It was a calculated, clean movement, unlike the jump. He loved spins, how free they made him feel and the way he sped up or slowed down depending on how close he drew his limbs to his body. They also seemed more musical to him, more dancelike. Breaking out of his spin, he glided across the surface of the ice again with his arms raised.

Sometimes, he danced like he would to one of the folk songs they had at local fairs, sharp and jerky with lots of short leaps and stomps on the ice, but today a gentler motion guided him. Almost unbidden, his eyes closed, and he allowed his body to drift around the ice by heart. A strain of music, gentle and unidentifiable, pressed against his inner ear, and he unconsciously turned toward it, following it across the ice. His blades kicked up a spray of snow when he skirted the rough patch of ice he had identified earlier, his feet gliding along to push him faster. The inaudible music caught the edges of his blades and pulled him across the ice until he wasn’t even paying attention to where he was anymore, just trusting his body to be where he needed it to be.

The music swelled, and he jumped with it, this time landing on steady blades instead of crashing down. It drew him into figures across the ice, short lunges and turns before propelling him into a spin. He leaned forward into the spin, lifting one leg off the ice, then raised the leg over his head and caught the blade of his skate between his fingers.

His eyes popping open in surprise, Victor slowed down the spin and lowered his leg. He’d never done a spin like that before, and he had no idea what had inspired him to perform it- or even how he’d managed to get his leg that far back. Grinding to a halt as the music cut off without coming to a logical end, he dug his blades into the ice and looked up to the sky, his arms down and slightly forward at his sides with his hands splayed, palms up.

Somehow, this time felt… different. The ice had always called to him, but this time its siren song was harder to ignore. What could have changed? What was drawing him?

Did it have something to do with his Fey blood?

He was so absorbed in his thoughts that he heard the warning back from Makkachin too late. A crack echoed out over the ice, and Victor, shocked, looked around for the source. Was that a gunshot? Was someone shooting at him?

At the second crack, he correctly identified the source and looked down at his feet. During his blind dance, he had ended up directly in the center of the pond, where the ice was weakest, and a large crack was spreading across the surface underneath his feet. Panicked bile rising in his throat, Victor tried to push himself off the weak ice, but it was too late and the ice shattered beneath his feet, plunging him into the freezing water below.

 

☙☘❧

 

As Yuuri watched, the man dancing on the mirror of the ice gilded around, then pulled into a spin. He was beautiful, he observed, his hair flaring silver in the moonlight and his body embodying some unheard music. His face was blurry, but Yuuri was sure that it would be beautiful, too. The lake’s surface solidified more tangibly, giving a clearer picture of the man. He could practically count the buttons on his jacket.

The man pulled out of the spin, then began to glide around the mirror-ice again, performing a series of figures and a small jump before pulling into another spin where he reached over his head to grab onto his foot. Slowing down, he dropped his foot again, then ended his spin with his gaze searching the night sky, his chest heaving with exertion.

He was captivating. Unconsciously, Yuuri leaned forward to get a better look, and the stone he was holding dropped into the lake, breaking through the crust of mirror-ice and casting a series of ripples through the solid skim, dissolving it into nothingness. Hissing in disappointment, Yuuri leaned back, only to see the same image appear in the reflection of the moon on the surface of the lake- but something was wrong. Instead of a beautiful icy blue, this vision was tinged with the aura of a bloody red.

Yuuri blinked, and the man disappeared from the image. Shortly after, the vision of the frozen pond disappeared altogether, leaving just the full moon reflected in the lake of unlife. What had just happened? Who was that man? Stunned, he stared into the bottomless depths of the lake, but it gave up none of its secrets.

Something in the deep in the water caught his eye, and he leaned over the water to get a better look at it, grabbing onto one of the skeleton branches that dipped down to the lake’s surface so he wouldn’t lose his balance and tumble in. It was hard to tell because the blue sparks of unlife magic obscured it, but it looked almost like… a gate, the kind that lead to the humans’ world.

 

❖⚘❖

 

Victor understood the cold.

Logically, Victor knew the temperature of the pond: just over freezing.

Logically, he knew exactly what he needed to do to get out: swim back up to the surface and haul himself out of the hole he had fallen through.

Logically, he knew how long he had to make it to a nearby house in his sodden clothes before he ran the risk of hypothermia and frostbite: about five minutes.

Unfortunately, the logical part of Victor’s mind was locked away like the breath in his frozen lungs as soon as the water closed over his head. The heavy blades on his skates and the layers of sodden clothing he was wearing dragged him down quickly, and by the time he could react, he was already far under the surface.

Victor had thought he understood the cold. He now understood how wrong he was.

 _Stay calm_ , the rational part of Victor’s mind begged, but it was quickly overshadowed by the panicked half, which screamed, _I am calm! I’m fucking calm, alright? Get me the fuck out of here!_

Victor began to flail as the memories of swimming from summers years past kicked in, slowly progressing back towards the surface, but it was too late by that time. He had drifted as he had sunk, and when his hands reached the surface of the pond, they bumped up against the unforgiving underside of the ice. Sweeping his hands against the ice, he tried to find the hole he had fallen through, but it wasn’t within his range of perception.

His body was holding on in the face of the cold better than a normal human’s could, but even he had his limits and his movements were starting to get sluggish. The bottom of the ice drifted away from his fingertips and he tried to bring it back, but he was sinking again and nothing could drag him back up to the surface.

 

☙☘❧

 

It was a gate, Yuuri realized as he looked closer. It opened wider, disgorging something into the depths of the lake, before snapping shut in a display of blue sparks. Upon further consideration, he realized that something was the body of a man.

A man who looked suspiciously like the man he had just been watching dance across the mirror-ice.

With a curse, Yuuri jumped back from the edge of the lake and whistled for his werehound. Vicchan bounded up instantly, and transformed back into his large form as Yuuri started to strip out of his outer layers of clothing.

When he was naked down to his undergarments, Yuuri yanked a short braided rope from one of his pockets and held it out to Vicchan, who bit down on the proffered end. It could expand almost infinitely, but only from one side, and the other side forced it to grow shorter again. Yuuri usually used it as a leash for Vicchan, but now their roles would be reversed.

“Good boy,” Yuuri panted, tying the other end around his waist with a secure knot. It grew longer as he moved closer to the edge of the lake. “Don’t let go of that, and when I give two tugs, pull me up okay?”

Vicchan barked once around the rope in his teeth, gripping it tightly, and Yuuri ruffled his ears before he turned around and dove into the water, the magic rope extending after him.

 

☙☘❧

 

The water was starting to feel warmer as Victor sunk deeper, and he wasn’t sure if that was a good thing or a bad thing. Maybe, if the water really was warmer, he could unfreeze his limbs and make another try for the surface before he ran out of air. On the other hand, he had heard that when people freeze to death, the cold starts to feel warm.

Still, he had no other choice, so Victor gently swam in the direction he felt the warmth coming from, his movements stiff and jerky from cold. He lost his sense of direction and which way was up, just which way was cold and which was warm. The pressure on his lungs intensified, but Victor refused to let his precious lungful of air out, because he knew that once he did, he would be as good as dead. Water danced around his nose, begging for entrance, but he denied as best he could until he inhaled a little by accident in the midst of a snort. That small amount opened up the gates and his lungs flooded with water.

Without the pressure on his chest, Victor felt much calmer. Maybe it wasn’t so bad under the water, he mused as his movements slowed to a standstill. There was no one to please, no neighbors that judged… and best of all, it was warm. Maybe… maybe he could just… stay here…

 

☙☘❧

 

Yuuri pushed through the water, swimming with all his might towards the figure suspended in the water. He kept his eyes open as he swam, and the blue of the unlife lake filled his vision, the man a black speck in the distance. His arms burning, Yuuri pushed himself harder until he could clearly see the form of the man, his clothes floating around him in the absence of a current. His hair, pure silver and long enough to brush against his nose, wafted about his face and prevented Yuuri from getting a good look at it, but his heart twisted at just the sight of his jawline.

_Who was this man?_

That question, along with the more important ones like how he had gotten in the lake, could be answered once Yuuri got him back up to the surface. Quickly closing the remaining distance between them, he seized the man around the waist and gave two sharp tugs on the rope. On the other end, Vicchan must have started to pull, because the slack in the rope disappeared and he felt himself being pulled backwards through the water with the strange man in his arms.

 

☙☘❧

 

What… was this…? Was someone… dragging him through the water?

 

☙☘❧

 

Yuuri sucked in a lungful of clean night air as soon as his head breached the surface, then propped his arm behind the man’s head to give him the same option, but no breath fluttered against his face. Cursing, Yuuri started swimming one-handed toward the shore to get them there faster, examining the man’s face as he did so. He looked so different from any of the people who lived in the court, either human changeling like himself or Fey. Instead, he had the practical features of a human while still maintaining some of the etheriality of the Fey. Shaking his head, Yuuri looked away from his face and concentrated on swimming. He couldn’t find out anything about the man if he died.

Vicchan dropped the rope and grabbed the back of Yuuri’s soaking undershirt in his teeth, hauling him and his burden out of the water. For a moment, Yuuri laid there, his limbs spent and trembling, then he lept into action, turning the man onto his back and ripping through his sodden layers of clothing to expose his chest. Leaning to press an ear against the smooth skin over his heart, Yuuri heard the faintest of heartbeats, almost too weak to make out.

Wasting no time, Yuuri plugged the man’s nose and breathed air into his open mouth, then pressed in the center of his chest, hoping the motion would jumpstart his lungs into expelling the water they contained themselves, but he still lay unresponsive against the hard ground. Yuuri repeated the action again and again, fitting his mouth over the strange man’s and breathing life into him before pressing down on his chest. When he saw the flutter of the man’s eyelashes, he redoubled his efforts until the man twitched his arms as he opened his eyes.

Yuuri caught his breath as he stared into the most beautiful pair of ice blue eyes he had ever seen, and he started babbling before he knew what he was saying.

“You’re alive! I’m so glad- I’m the one who pulled you out of the water. My name is Yuuri. How did you get in there…?”

 

☙☘❧

 

Victor’s entire body hurt, he realized as he was dragged back to consciousness. His throat burned, his eyes felt raw and dry, and his arms and legs were heavy, like he’d just run the length of the village carrying an armful of wood. He felt vaguely aware of a warm pressure against his mouth, almost like a kiss. It would disappear intermittently, replaced by a shock to his chest, then come back and envelope him in warmth again. The sensation pulled him back, and he dragged his eyes open to see the face of a man who was stooping low to breathe air into his mouth- no, a face like that couldn’t belong to someone who was merely a man.

The person who had saved him was an angel.

The angel leaned back, relief flooding his expression, and he started babbling incoherently. The only thing Victor’s waterlogged ears could make out was, “...name is Yuuri…”

The angel was stunning, even dressed only in soaked underclothes. Perhaps it was the near-death experience, but the sight of the damp white fabric clinging to his tanned skin made Victor’s heart beat faster. Those dark brown eyes, peeking out from a black fringe plastered to his forehead, drew him in with promises of warmth. Victor wanted to beg him to come closer, to continue giving him air so he would have the excuse to kiss him.

His chance for observation only lasted a split second. With a choking gag, his body fought to expel the water in his lungs, and he vomited water and bile all down the angel’s shirtfront.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And they meet again! What do people think? Let me know!


	3. Truce

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> When Victor comes to, he has a lot to come to grips with- including the identity of the angel who pulled him from the water.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter, too, has been edited and overhauled, so any returning readers might notice some differences.

☙☘❧

 

Vicchan had been a gift from the King of the Fey, Yakov, when Yuuri was about five or six years old. He’d gone the complete circuit of the seasons with Mila three times now, with another spring for good measure. It was about the age when aristocratic children of the Fey Court usually recieved gifts of changeling companions, but for obvious reasons, Yuuri had been denied that exerience.

In fact, after the disaster that had caused his intended companion to be switched with him, neither of the Rulers of the Fey Court had ever considered taking another changeling, and most of the Court had gone along with their example in unspoken agreement. The whole Fey Realm had been rocked at the loss of the beloved Prince, and even Yuuri, who had never met him, felt his loss keenly everywhere he went.

Yuuri never called the Fey King “Papa”, just like he never called the Queen “Mama”. He knew, to them, that he was at best a shallow replacement for the son they had lost, and they treated him accordingly. Once they had recovered enough from their grief that they could stand to look at him, they had loved him superficially, giving him anything he ever expressed a desire for, and more gifts besides. Less preferential treatment was given to his brother Yuri, but when Yuuri begged, they would still fulfill his requests as well.

Yuuri tried not to mind; after all, they weren’t his real parents, just as he wasn’t their real son. He had Mila and Yuri to love him, and the other Faeries of the Court who saw their situation and tried to help.

Out of all the presents Yuuri ever recieved from the King, Vicchan was by far the best. The day he had gotten him, a handler of exotic animals had come to the Fey Court from a far-away land, perhaps even outside of the seasonal landscape. He had many beasts in cages that he was looking to sell, including giant eagles, chimeras, hipogriffs, and even a sad looking merman in a tank, among others. Yuuri had been allowed to walk through them until one caught his eyes, a small puppy huddled at the bottom of a cage with a kitten who had a stinger like that of a scorpion instead of a tail.

The puppy’s eyes were small and sad, and Yuuri dropped to his knees in front of the cage and pointed to him. As the handler let him out, he explained what the puppy was, but Yuuri didn’t hear him; he was focused on petting his soft fur and fondling his floppy ears. After a few seconds, the attention drew a small whine from the dog, and he licked at Yuuri’s cheek.

Giggling, Yuuri wrapped his hands around the puppy’s neck and squeezed, hearing too late the handler’s warning of, “Ah, I wouldn’t do that if I were you…”

The puppy transformed into a giant mastiff several times Yuuri’s size, knocking him to the floor and growling into his face. For a moment, Yuuri stared up at the drooling jowls of the giant dog, then he screamed out a laugh as the massive beast licked his face with a sloppy tongue.

“As I was saying,” the handler was explaining to King Yakov, “This animal is a breed of shapeshifter, a werehound, to be exact. They’re very good guard dogs, and are often used as bodyguards by the Fey who live on the darker side of the moon’s shadow.”

Those of the Court who were in attendance tensed at the words, but Yuuri was oblivious. He pressed an enthusiastic kiss to the werehound’s nose, then looked up at the King.

“I love him!”

After only the slightest hesitation, King Yakov nodded, and the decision was made. The transaction was made quickly; the dog perked up considerably when it realized it wasn’t going to go back in the cage. It shrunk down to the size of a puppy again and burrowed underneath Yuuri’s shirt, and the King leaned down to pet the top of his head when it popped out of Yuuri’s neckhole.

“What are you going to name him?” He asked gruffly.

After a moment’s thought, Yuuri’s smile brightened. “I’m going to call him Vicchan!”

Again, Yuuri didn’t notice how it made the other Fey tense. It was only years later that he realized the similarity to the missing Prince’s name.

The handler started packing up the animals as Yuuri hugged Vicchan’s neck, kissing his big nose and receiving messy licks in return. Delighted, he squeezed him closer, eliciting a loud bark from the werehound that almost knocked him over. Out of the corner of his eye, Yuuri saw Yuri hovering at the edges of the courtroom, a tense expression on his pinched face.

“Look, Yuri!” Yuuri giggled, laughing as Vicchan licked a long strip up his cheek. “I got a puppy! Wanna meet him?”

But Yuri’s face only pinched tighter. “I don’t like dogs,” he snapped, then faded further into the background.

Yuuri was troubled by his brother’s actions, but only for a moment. He was, after all, a child. He was about to go back to hugging his new pet when a cat-like cry caught his attention. Vicchan’s ears perked up at the sound too, and he whimpered, straining back towards the cage he had just been released from. Yuuri saw that the scorpion-tailed cat inside was crying as the handler picked up the cage, reached for Vicchan, and the werehound strained back toward it.

For a moment, Yuuri hesitated, considering. Vicchan and the strange cat looked like they didn’t want to be seperated, but he couldn’t ask for both of them; he could never be that greedy. The wails of the cat made his heart weep, however, and Yuuri couldn’t bare to see the handler take it away, not when it was so obviously attached to Vicchan. He turned to look at his brother again, and saw Yuri’s gaze following the cat.

Of course!

With no small amount of trepidation, Yuuri tugged on the slack of King Yakov’s pant leg. “...Majesty?”

King Yakov’s hard gaze landed on Yuuri, and he almost abandoned his quest, but Vicchan’s silent nuzzle at the back of his knee convinced him to keep going.

“What is it, Yuuri?”

“I was thinking…” Yuuri swallowed nervously, then forced himself to continue. “Vicchan seems attached to that… cat-thing. They were cage-mates. It would be mean to seperate them.”

The King said nothing, just sat in stony silence as if waiting for Yuuri to continue. He took a deep breath before speaking again all in a rush.

“And maybe Yuri would like a pet too?”

If it had been Queen Lilia, she wouldn’t have done it. But King Yakov just looked at Yuuri’s shaking hands, then at the scorpion-cat, then he raised his hand to stop the handler.

“Wait a moment. What’s that?”

“Ah, this? You have a good eye, your majesty!” The handler set the cage down, then picked the scorpion-cat out of it, holding it in a two-handed grip by the scruff of its neck and the tail, right below the barb. “This is a manticore. A baby one, so he’s not dangerous yet, but they have a penchant for violence when older. Highly intelligent animals, and extremely loyal to those they view as their Masters, but difficult to control. Are you interested in him as well?”

King Yakov regarded the spitting manticore for a moment, then waved Yuri to his side. “Come here, Yuri. I want you to see this.”

Yuri came out of the shadows and to his father’s side, but his face still held a pinched petulance. “What?”

The handler dropped down to his knees to show Yuri the baby manticore. “What do you think of Ponya?”

“Ponya?” Yuri stared into the hissing manticore’s face. “He’s alright, I guess.”

Yuuri shrank away from the beast, pressing his face into Vicchan’s fur, but Yuri stared the cat in the eye as it tried to bite his nose. When he reached a finger out, the baby manticore snapped at it, and Yuri swifty cuffed it on its nose.

“Bad kitty.”

For a moment, the manticore looked shocked, then it shrank back and hissed again, but less menacingly and more subserviently.

Chuckling, the handler held him out to Yuri again. “Would you like to hold him?”

There was hesitation in Yuri’s face. It was obvious he wanted the cat-thing, but didn’t want to let anyone know how much he wanted it.

“Sure, I guess.”

The handler quickly showed Yuri how to hold the baby manticore so it couldn’t hurt him, then deposited it in his arms. Yuri spent about two seconds elevating the manticore in the proper position, one hand on the scruff of the neck, the other on the tail barb, before snorting and cradling it against his chest with an eye roll. He still kept a grip on the tail barb, however, and scratched behind its ears with his free hand. The manticore latched onto his finger with sharp teeth, but Yuri didn’t even blink, just shoved his finger deeper into its mouth until it choked and let go.

Blood welled up from tiny puncture wounds on Yuri’s finger, but he didn’t even break his rhythm and scratched behind the manticore’s ears again. Twice more, it bit him, and twice more he choked it with his finger until it gave in and let him pet it. Within moments, the manticore was purring and nuzzling its head under Yuri’s jaw, who was trying not to look triumphant and failing spectacularly.

Even the handler seemed stunned by this display, and he turned back to King Yakov. “So, um… will you be taking this one as well?”

King Yakov looked at his son. “Yuri?”

Yuri buried his face in the manticore’s fur in lieu of a response, so King Yakov just nodded to the handler.

“Yes, we’ll take them both.”

Yuuri squeezed Vicchan’s neck happily, who barked and transformed into a huge hound again, knocking him over and licking his face from top to bottom. His laughter rang in the lofty halls of the summer court, soon accompanied by Yuri’s chuckle, muffled by the manticore’s fur.

 

☙☘❧

 

Victor choked as his lungs fought to replace the water inside them with air, spewing watery vomit all over the angel. Quickly, the angel grabbed his shoulders and pushed him onto his knees so the water could leave his lungs more easily, rubbing soothing circles on his back and whispering words of encouragement in his ear as Victor fought to breathe. When his lungs started functioning again, he pulled in several deep breaths of air, ragged in the quiet of the clearing.

Speaking of the clearing…

Now that Victor was do longer actively dying, he spared a few seconds to look around himself, and he was shocked by what he saw. The lake the angel had pulled him out of, he saw, was not the frozen pond he had fallen into, but a much bigger and deeper one, tinted with a strange blue-black glow. The trees around the lake looked ancient and twisted, skeleton leafless branches reaching gnarled claws down to the surface of the water.

And then there was the existence of the angel himself. There was no way a man as beautiful as that could exist in any mortal plane.

Victor swore when he realized that he must have died and he was now in heaven, and the angel jumped.

“I’m sorry- are you… okay?”

“Fuck!” Victor sat back on his heels. “Papa told me to be careful! I should’ve just listened to them! Mama is going to kill me!”

The angel blinked. “I’m… what?”

“Because I died!” Victor exclaimed. “They told me no be careful on the ice, but I fell through and drowned, and then an angel pulled me to the other life!”

“An angel? Where?” The angel looked around, then his eyes widened. “Oh! You were talking about me-! Oh, gosh, you’ve got it all wrong, I’m not an angel, I’m just… just Yuuri.”

So the angel’s name was Yuuri. Victor shook his head emphatically. “If you aren’t an angel, how did you pull me out of the pond, huh? It was completely frozen over! Explain that!”

“I didn’t- okay, you’re confused; I get that. Let me explain to you what happened.” Yuuri sat down in front of Victor, who mirrored his stance. “I didn’t pull you from… wherever you were before. I was just sitting here, and all of a sudden I saw you appear in the bottom of the lake, and I dragged you out. That’s it. I’m not an angel.”

Said the angel while looking particularly angelic in his damp underclothes. Victor shook his head. “Fine. Say I believe you. If I’m not in heaven, where am I?”

“This is the circle of unlife.”

“Unlife?” Victor’s jaw dropped. “So I didn’t even make it to heaven? I’m in purgatory?”

“No!” The angel slapped his hands down on his lap. “For goodness sakes, you’re not dead! This is the realm of the Fey! Someone how you ended up in the bottom of the lake of unlife, and I pulled you out!”

Victor’s brain had short-circuited at the word _Fey_. Something his Mama Katsuki had always said to him flashed through his mind, and a shiver went down his spine that had nothing to do with the way his damp clothes clung to his frame.

_“Be wary of water, Victor. Someone once told us that sources of water can open pathways to the Fey world.”_

Suddenly Yuuri - the Fey, not the angel - grabbed Victor’s face and looked deep into his eyes. Victor pulled away with a jerk, but it was enough time for Yuuri’s eyes to widen again.

“Oh,” he said slowly. “You’re… from the human world.”

So Yuuri had rescued him because he thought Victor was one of them. Victor shifted uncomfortably, cursing that he had to thank his silvered heritage for this Fey’s willingness to save him. He stuck out his hand. “It’s… nice to meet you. My name is-”

“No!”

Suddenly, Yuuri’s hand was at his mouth, cutting off his words, and the rest of Yuuri was a lot closer to Victor as well. He snatched his hand away as soon as he realized what he’d instinctually done, his dark cheeks flaming.

“I mean, no, don’t tell me your name. Names have power here. I don’t want a human like you to get messed up in Fey business because someone used your name.”

A thrill of fear went through Victor. Mama Katsuki had stopped telling as many stories about the Fey people when he had been brought to them, Mari had told him, but he still knew enough about the favors and deals of the Fey to fear them.

Suspiciously, he asked, “Then why did you stop me from telling you my name? You’re a Faerie; wouldn’t you want to have control over me?” His eyes widened as he realized something else. “Wait- are you going to exact a favor from me because you saved me? Am I going to be in your debt forever?”

Yuuri’s eyes grew darker. “I’m… not like other Fey. And by the way, asking a Faerie if you’re going to be in their debt is not a good way to stay unscathed here.”

Victor blanched, then pulled back from Yuuri. “So, you are going to…?”

He left the question hanging, and Yuuri sighed. “No, I’m not. I’m not the type to exact favors from humans.”

Victor decided right then and there that he wasn’t going to tell this Fey, or any others he met, that he might be one of them. If they were willing to offer terrible deals to defenseless humans, what would they do to a changeling like him?

All of a sudden, Yuuri was bowled over by a giant beast of indeterminable shape, and Victor’s breath froze in his lungs as the beast then fixed its glowing red eyes on him and snarled. It padded threateningly towards Victor, who was too frozen to move backwards, then pounced on him, forcing him back to the ground. With its paws planted firmly in the center of his chest, Victor finally realized that it was a huge dog the size of a horse.

The dog barked in Victor’s face with the concussive power of a gunshot. He barely had time to comprehend the size of the thing that was sitting on his chest before he heard Yuuri shout some command to the dog, which abruptly yipped and shrank down to the size Makkachin had been as a puppy. Now that Yuuri had appeased it, it appeared that the dog was content to wriggle against Victor’s damp clothing and lick his cheek with a wet tongue.

“Vicchan!” Yuuri grabbed the puppy and curled it against his chest, where it struggled to escape from the dampness of his undershirt. “I’m so sorry about that. Vicchan- well, he can be very protective of me.”

“Wait, let me get this straight.” Victor slowly pushed himself into a more upright position. “You have a pet monster who can turn into a puppy?”

Yuuri pinkened and pushed his face into the dog’s fur. “He’s… he’s normally not so aggressive… I don’t know what’s gotten into him…”

Well, if nothing else, at least there were dogs in the Fey world. “That is the cutest thing I’ve ever seen! Can I pet him?”

Yuuri blinked, then looked from Victor to Vicchan and back again. “I guess… if you want to…”

He held Vicchan out to Victor, who accepted him with gentle hands. The puppy squirmed a bit before settling into his embrace. Victor pulled him close, setting his face down into the damp fur and breathing in lightly of the scent. It reminded him of Makkachin, and a pang of homesickness suddenly went through Victor.

He was in the realm of the Fey. He had already known it, of course, but now it sank in and seemed more real than before. He was in the realm of the Fey, and he didn’t know how to get back home.

If the human world really was his true home.

No. Even if he had been born here, the human world was where his family was. Banishing the traitorous thought, Victor lowered Vicchan into his lap, who immediately squirmed out of his grasp and headed back to Yuuri. Biting his lip, he considered his next words carefully.

“Yuuri? I know you said you weren’t the type to… abuse humans, but I have to ask. Is any information you might give me… free?”

Yuuri looked almost insulted. “Of course. I said I wasn’t that kind of Faerie.”

“Then…” Victor hesitated, then leaned forward, forcing himself to keep eye contact with the angel. Or the Faerie, his mind corrected, but that didn’t mean he was any less beautiful. Or any less clothed in damp underclothes. Moving on. “Can I ask you how I got here? And how I might be able to get back home?”

“Ah.” Yuuri’s face twisted in regret. “I’m sorry to say I don’t know. One second, I was just sitting here, and the next I noticed a gate open in the bottom of the lake and there you were. Gates between the human and Fey realms are notoriously difficult to open and even harder to control. I don’t know who could have opened the gate that sent you here, and I certainly don’t have the power to send you back myself.”

Victor’s shoulders slumped. “So that means… I’m stuck here? I’ll never be able to get home again?”

“I… didn’t say that.”

Victor’s head jerked back up to see that Yuuri had stood, Vicchan stopping his wriggling in his arms as if he understood the solemnity of the moment. Yuuri hesitated, his fingers combing restlessly through Vicchan’s fur before he squared his shoulders.

“I… can’t open a gate for you, but I might be able to find someone who can. But they will have a price, and it will be steep. And I… I can’t do something like that for free either.”

Victor bit the inside of his cheek. “What do you need?”

For a moment, Yuuri’s eyes flashed, then he shook his head. “For you to get a sense of self-preservation, for one. What if I asked for your first-born child?”

“I trust you not to.”

His jaw dropped open, and redness flushed across his cheeks. Victor couldn’t help but think it looked cute on him as he buried his face in Vicchan’s fur to give himself some sense of modesty. “You shouldn’t. You shouldn’t trust anyone here. That’s not how this world operates. As for my price…” he hesitated again, then spoke softly. “There’s someone - several someones - I want to find in the human world. I would like you to find them for me… and then give them something. Would this be acceptable to you?”

“I…” Victor almost said yes immediately, then remembered what Yuuri had said and stopped to consider his words. _Someone_ was a very broad spectrum of people. And give them something? Give them what? What if the thing he was supposed to give them was dangerous? What if they were so far away he could never find them?

“Who? And what?” he asked cautiously, but Yuuri just shook his head.

“I’ll tell you when we find a gate for you.”

That made it even more suspicious. But this person had pulled him from the depths of a lake and breathed the life back into his lungs. Victor didn’t think that anyone who would do that for a stranger would give him an impossible task.

Nodding, he said, “I accept.”

“Good.” Yuuri set Vicchan back on the ground, where he immediately turned back into a sleek hound the size of a small horse. “Get on, then. And, um…” His face pinkened adorably again. “You might want to fix your shirt first. Sorry about that.”

For the first time, Victor glanced down at himself and realized that his jacket and shirt were yanked askew and open at his chest, showing off his toned pectoral muscles. His own cheeks warmed when he remembered how he had woken to find Yuuri breathing air into his lungs and pressing firm compressions in the center of his bare chest.

“Um, yes. I’ll… do that.”

As he was fixing his shirt, trying to salvage what buttons were left hanging by threads and securing what he couldn’t save with a cord he pulled from the laces of his skates, which he’d forgotten he was still wearing, Yuuri also put the rest of his clothes back on. Victor had to catch his breath when he looked up again to see him shrugging on a blue jacket that would have been nothing less than royal back in the human world. Slipping of his skates, he held them up and stood awkwardly in his wet socks.

Yuuri’s nose crinkled when he looked at the skates. “Are those… normal footwear for humans? They don’t seem to be very efficient.”

“No,” Victor quickly assured him. “These are my skates. I can only wear them on ice, a frozen pond or the like. That’s… well, I’m guessing that’s how I ended up here. I was skating, and I fell through where the ice was thin.” The memory of the ice cracking open beneath Victor’s skates suddenly swept over Victor’s vision again, and he shuddered. He didn’t think he’d be able to skate again for a long time without being reminded of that awful moment.

“I see.” Something clicked behind Yuuri’s eyes, but he didn’t tell Victor what. “Well, you can’t wear those.”

He reached into a bag he had slung over Vicchan’s bag and pulled out a pair of boots, eyeing Victor’s feet before he tugged on a cord and the boots expanded to a size that would fit Victor. Satisfied, he nodded and held them out. “These should fit you now.”

Victor reached out to grab them, stunned for a moment by the display of magic he had just witnessed, then stopped himself just in time. “These don’t come with a catch, do they? I won’t owe you any more favors?”

A laugh lit up Yuuri’s eyes. “Now you’re thinking the right way, but no, they’re a gift. No strings attached.”

 _Good. I don’t know what else I could do for you_. But Victor didn’t say it aloud, just accepted the boots and put them on. They were the perfect size. Once he had stood again, he saw that Yuuri had already jumped on Vicchan’s back.

“Get on.”

His mouth going dry, Victor hesitated. “Where are we going?”

Sighing, Yuuri flushed. “I don’t… actually know. There are only five Faeries in this Court who have the power to open a gate to the human world. Of those five, two would probably kill you as soon as look as you, one would exploit you with an unfair bargain, one has been locked in an impenetrable prison for the past twenty cycles or so, and one was exiled a few centuries ago and is hiding out on the border between Summer and the darker side of the Moonless Court.”

Victor blinked under the tirade of information, trying to sort through it for the most important pieces. “So… which one are we going to for help?”

“That depends. Would you rather die a horrible death, waste years of your life searching for something that may not exist anymore, or suffer untold horrors at the hand of a manipulative Faerie?”

Blanching, Victor asked weakly, “Are those my only options?”

“If you screw up, yes. But that’s why I’m going with you.” Yuuri turned to look into the skeleton trees that surrounded them. “Our best bet would either be Celestino or Giacometti. So, how about it? Recluse and difficult to find hermit, or easily accessible sociopath?”

Inching closer to Vicchan, Victor asked, “Which one do you think is better?”

“Celestino would be more likely to help you, and his price won’t be bad, but the trick is finding him. He’s been in hiding for years, and many Faeries have searched for him and failed. Giacometti, on the other hand, will be easy to find but his price will be steep.” Yuuri took a deep breath. “I would try to find Celestino if I was you. It may take a while, but Giamecetti is much more likely to finagle you into a deal you shouldn’t make.”

Victor was scared at how much time _a while_ would take and how much pain he would cause his family by missing months, or years, of their lives. But it would be better to return to them late than not at all.

“Let’s do it, then,” he said with a confidence that was more for himself than Yuuri. “Take me there. Please,” he added almost as an afterthought.

Nodding, Yuuri held out his hand to help Victor mount Vicchan behind him, and again Victor hesitated. While Vicchan the puppy was cute, this version of him was definitely less so. But Yuuri’s eyes were so warm and open that Victor was helpless to do anything but grasp his hand and let him pull him onto the back of the massive hound. His hands encircled Yuuri’s waist from behind but the Faerie didn’t seem to mind, even when Victor tightened his grip as Yuuri whistled and Vicchan jumped into an easy lope.

They jumped through a barrier of blue light that Victor didn’t even bother trying to guess the purpose of, then started loping through a strangely warm forest made up of trees with trunks wide enough that five people would be hard-pressed to fit their arms around their bases. The massive trunks left plenty of room between them for Vicchan to pass through, as the ground was bare of all plants except for a thick carpet of moss, and the unseasonable heat soon dried the remaining water from Victor’s wet clothes. Eventually, the strange gait of the hound lulled Victor into an exhausted stupor, his body rebelling from all the excitement it had sustained and subverting his too-active mind into sleep.


	4. Yurio

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Victor meets Yuri.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter, too, had been edited and overhauled, so returning readers might notice some differences.

❖⚘❖

 

When Victor was around fifteen, he was first introduced to the idea of ice skating through a traveling troubadour. The troubadour had been everywhere Victor could think to ask him of, including an island nation a quick skip across the ocean from a nation somewhere to the southwest of them; Victor had never been good at geography is school, so didn’t know exactly where. The nobility of that island nation, he told Victor, had a few interesting pastimes, including dancing on the frozen ponds in winter with blades attached to their boots. 

From that moment, Victor had known he wanted a pair, and he dreamed about dancing on the ice like others dreamed about dancing with a crush at a festival. When he finally found sporadic work several years later, he gave most of the money to help support his family, but he was allowed to keep a little for himself, and at last he had saved up enough to commission the skates as a joint project from both the cobbler and the blacksmith. 

It took several tries, but at last Victor had in his hands a pair of bladed boots that could help him dance on the ice. That Christmas, Papa Katsuki had taken him and the rest of the family out to play on the frozen pond with some of the other local families, and he had tried them out for the first time. 

Walking suddenly became a lot harder than he remembered, and Victor’s first step out onto the ice had him faceplanting dramatically into a snowbank. Laugher had echoed around him, mostly from his dear sister, but the chill feel of the white powder against his cheeks pushed a new kind of surety into his bloodstream. 

Pushing himself up, he made it back onto the ice and managed to glide for several paces before faceplanting again, this time directly into the hard surface of the ice. As he pushed himself back to his feet, numb fingers pressed against the unforgiving ice, Victor was absolutely positive of one thing: this was where he belonged. 

The ice was his home. 

 

☙☘❧

 

Yuuri and the human developed an companionable, if a little uneasy, relationship over the next few weeks as they traveled through the land of Summer. Their progress was slowed somewhat by their choice of paths, since they often took long detours around the more populated areas to avoid his human companion being seen. The few times they had met others while traveling, he had been able to lay his head against Yuuri’s back and pretend to be asleep. 

As they were nearing the dusk of the sixteenth day, the human actually fell asleep against his back as they were slowed to a crawl as Vicchan picked his way through the dense undergrowth that surrounded the massive tree trunks of the Eastern Summer forest. He’d noticed him doing that a lot over the past few weeks, despite how little physical activity he was doing, but it didn’t worry Yuuri. Mila had told him that he’d been the same way when he first came to the realm of the Faerie, noticeable despite him being a child; sometimes, she’d told him, he would sleep for over a day at a time, then wake up and cry because she hadn’t been able to rouse him to eat. It was the magic in the atmosphere here; it made the air thinner and more difficult to breathe, and it took a human’s body a long time to adjust to it, if they ever could. Yuuri was one of the lucky ones. 

When Yuuri slid off Vicchan’s back, taking the sleepy human with him, who woke up just enough to stand on his own, he barked and shifted down into his puppy size, nosing at Yuuri’s pant leg with a yip. 

“Alright, I suppose I’ll take the first watch.” 

Yuuri led the sleepy human to lay down on a lump of moss at the base of a tree, where he immediately fell fast asleep again. The Summer night was warm enough that they didn’t need to light a fire to avoid freezing, but Yuuri still dug a small hole in the moss and used his magic-imbued tinder to knock a small ball of blue flame into existence. It hovered over the richly scented earth, vibrant with all the artificial life he could muster. The fireball provided just enough illumination that Yuuri could see to read as he sat down against the trunk of the tree opposite the human, Vicchan instantly snuggling up inside his jacket and falling asleep. 

The book lay open on Yuuri’s lap, but he found himself unable to concentrate on it, his gaze instead drifting to the human sleeping opposite him. His long silver hair, having come loose from its binding many days ago, fluttered about his face with every slow exhale, and Yuuri had to fight the urge to brush it away from his forehead. 

Who - or what - was he? His appearance was an enigma; without anyone to open a gate, he shouldn’t have been able to come through the bottom of the lake of unlife. But there was no one there but the two of them, and since he was a magicless human and Yuuri certainly didn’t possess the ability to open a gate it should have been impossible. And yet, here he was, curled up on the soft moss with his jacket spread over him like a blanket. 

With a sigh, Yuuri snapped his book shut. He wasn’t going to get anything else read tonight. As he moved to put it in his bag however, something glowing inside it caught his eye, and he frowned as he pulled it out. What was that amulet for, again? And why was it glowing? 

With a jolt, Yuuri realized that it was the amulet he had charmed to seek Yuri, his mission before he’d stumbled upon the human, and it was glowing because he was close. Correction: it was getting steadily brighter because he was getting steadily closer. 

“Oi, what’s going on here?” 

  
  
  


☙☘❧

 

Yuuri had spent a little over five years in the Fey world before he fully understood the reason why he couldn’t do what everyone around him could: magic. Magic had two forms in the Fey world, innate and learned. Innate magic was the kind someone was born with and the kind they could use instinctively, without the need for tutelage. For Queen Lillia, that was Ice magic, and for King Yakov, it was Stone. Mila, the sprite who took care of him and his brother during their circuits, had the gift of Blossom magic; she could make small vines and flowers grow from any crack or crevice, but the more unlikely the place was to have real flowers, the more energy it required to make them grow. Innate magic was as easy as breathing to a Faerie. 

Learned magic was the opposite. Any kind of magic could be performed by any individual, but learning anything outside of a kind of magic a Faerie were predisposed to was extremely difficult. That was why only the royal Fey and their advisors, the strongest magic-users in the Fey kingdom, had ever learned to open up gates between the Fey world and the human one. And for Yuuri, a human, and Yuri, who had never shown any innate magic, it was believed that they were unteachable. 

But Yuuri refused to let himself be different from everyone around him, desperate to prove that he belonged. He already knew what they said about him - nervous wreck, pampered human, surrogate Prince - and he didn’t need to give them any more fuel, so he swore that he would learn how to protect himself, at least. 

So he read, and learned, until at a young age he understood more about magic theory than most average Fey of the Court. All that was left was to put that knowledge into practice, but without the pre-paved road of an innate magic, he didn’t know how to jumpstart the process. 

One day in the Winter palace, Yuuri came across Queen Lillia working magic alone in one of the ballrooms with vauling ice ceilings. She was dancing, the shards of ice magic flickering around her fingertips as she moved like so many winking fireflies, reflecting the light from the blue magic torches around the edge of the room. Most of the court would be terrified to come across their Queen like that, fearing that she might sentence them to an eternity within the ice walls of the palace if they were discovered spying on her, but Yuuri wasn’t afraid. He stepped shyly into the room to watch her, and she noticed him almost immediately, but didn’t stop her dance. Only when she was done did she lower her hands, dismissing the magic surrounding them, and address her audience. 

“What do you want Yuuri?” 

“P-please, c-can… can y-you…” He whispered. 

“What is it? Speak up, child; I have no patience for those who waste my time.” 

“Teach me how to do that!” He begged loudly, then clapped his hands over his mouth. 

Queen Lilia fixed him with a pitying look, then walked over and kneeled before him. “Yuuri, I appreciate your enthusiasm, but I’m sorry. I only teach those with talent. You’re a human. You can’t do magic like this.” 

She stood up, leaving him crestfallen on the floor. “I’m sorry, Yuuri, but that’s just the way it is.” 

Yuuri left, but he returned the next day. When Queen Lilia saw him, this time she sighed and stopped her dance. 

“What is it this time, Yuuri?” 

Taking a deep breath, Yuuri darted out onto the dance floor with her and performed the same move she had just done. “I can do it!” He insisted breathlessly. “Teach me, please!” 

“No, Yuuri. I’m sorry, but no.” 

That night, Yuuri thought long and hard about why Queen Lilia refused his pleas. He read through every book on magic theory he had and dug down deep inside of himself to find the channels to the power in the world around him, and prepared until he was sure she would agree to teach him. 

The next day, Queen Lilia glared at him when he approached her magic-casting. “I thought I already told you no, Yuuri. Why are you here again?” 

“Please!” He begged, holding his hands out in front of him. Squeezing his eyes shut, he concentrated with all the might his tiny body possessed until he felt the palms of his hands cooled by a chill wind. Opening his eyes, he saw that he had created a small breeze and a single snowflake, which quickly dissolved into thin air. 

Expression unreadable, she stared at him, and Yuuri wanted to collapse on himself under the weight. Suddenly he was not so sure of the success of his plan anymore. “P-please?” He asked again, his hands shaking. “P-please t-teach me?” 

After one more critical look, Queen Lillia slowly nodded. “Alright. I’ll teach you some things. But if you don’t improve quickly enough, I will stop. Do you understand?” 

Nodding feverishly, Yuuri clasped his hands to his breast. “Yes! Thank you, Majesty!” 

“Stop that,” she snapped, gesturing him closer. “Don’t thank me yet. You may soon regret it.” 

A few days later, when Queen Lilia was forcing Yuuri through a grueling series of dance positions that she said would prepare his body for the magic to run through it, Yuri found their lesson and stuck his head around the door. When Queen Lilia asked him what his business was, he asked if she would teach him as well. When she refused, he left and never asked again. 

 

☙☘❧

 

“Yura! What are you doing here?” 

Yuuri spun around to face his scowling younger brother sitting astride his terrifying scorpion-cat. Potya’s tail flicked menacingly above Yuri’s head as he crouched low, allowing Yuri to slip off the manticore’s back. He absentmindedly patted her on the head as she hissed before stalking over to Yuuri. 

“I could ask the same of you, dear  _ brother _ ,” he spat. “What are you doing all the way in Summer? Are you following me?”  

“N-no! Of c-course not!” Yuuri protested weakly, trying to shove the glowing amulet inside a pocket, but Yuri spotted it and snatched it from his grasp. 

“What the hell is this? So you were following me!” 

“No, I wasn’t! I just… noticed it glowing in my bag a minute ago!” Yuuri grabbed for the amulet again, but Yuri pulled it out of his reach and Potya hissed and flicked her tail menacingly, so he retreated. 

“Oh, that’s a likely story!” Yuri tossed the amulet into the air, then dropped it to the ground and crushed it under his foot. A swooping sensation filled Yuuri’s gut as he felt the magic that had once powered it leaving his body. “Who put you up to this, hmm? The old hag? Giacometti? Or good old Mumsy herself?” 

“No one put me up to this!” Yuuri’s movements woke Vicchan, who jumped out of his jacket and transformed into a growling hellbeast, staring down Potya while Yuuri stared down his brother. “Is it a crime to care about my own brother when he missed the Feast of the Midwinter?” 

Eyes narrowing, Yuri snapped, “So you admit you were looking for me? I told you, I can take care of myself!” 

Yuuri felt himself shrinking away from his brother’s anger, but he forced himself to stay upright. “The world doesn’t revolve around you, Yuri,” Yuuri said with a shake his head. “I’m sorry I was worried about you, but I wasn’t looking for you. I’m here on business.” 

“Business?” Yuri wrinkled his nose, their brief argument forgotten. “What the Hell kind of business would bring you to Summer? I know you hate the season. You’re much more fond of Spring, of Winter when good old Mumsey isn’t on your ass.” 

Hesitating, Yuuri tried to shuffle his position to better cover the human’s sleeping form, but Yuri caught the movement and pushed past him. 

“What the hell? Who the fuck is this?” Yuri towered over the sleeping human, then glared back at Yuuri. “Meeting your secret lover?”

“He’s not-!” Yuuri protested, dragging Yuri away from the human before he could aim a kick at the human’s kidneys. “Just leave him alone, Yura! He’s none of your business.” 

“So he’s your business, huh? Your  _ private _ business?” 

“I never said that!” 

Their voices escalated to a louder volume during the course of their argument, and suddenly Yuuri noticed the human stirring from his sleep, so he grabbed the back of Yuri’s collar and dragged him backwards, but not before the human had shifted enough for Yuri to get a good look at his clothing. 

“He’s a human!” He hissed in Yuuri’s ear, grabbing onto his arm. “What the fuck are you doing out here with a human?” 

Yanking his arm out of Yuri’s grasp, Yuuri hissed right back, “I said, it’s none of your business!” 

“Holy Moon,” he gasped, stepping backwards. “You’re helping him, aren’t you! I knew that soft birth of yours would get you into trouble someday-!” 

“I’m not helping him!” Yuuri quickly defended, glancing back at the human to make sure he was still asleep enough that he wouldn’t hear what he was saying. “I just- we have a deal. He fell through somewhere, and I’m going to take him to someone who can send him back to the human world in exchange for a favor. Last I checked,” he hedged, “deals with humans were still allowed.” 

“Only because all the gates have been sealed and one hasn’t fallen through in years! You’re going to be in so much trouble if the Queen finds out what you’re up to!” Yuri shook his head, biting his lip. 

Yuuri allowed a grin to slip across his features as he nudged Yuri in the shoulder. “So you do care about me after all, little brother?” 

“Shut up! You’re not my real brother!” Yuri turned his back and stalked back to Potya, who was curled up around Vicchan. She was licking the fur at the back of his neck while he whined and nuzzled against her chest with floppy ears. “Oi! Potya! Stop messing around! We’re leaving.” 

“...Yuuri?” 

The quiet, sleepy call pulled Yuri up short, and he whirled around to glare at the newly awoken human rubbing sleep from his eyes. 

“What do you want from me?” 

At the same time, Yuuri asked, “What is it?” 

The human blinked, sitting up in surprise after receiving two answers. “Um… what?” 

“Fuck this!” Yuri spun to instead glare at Yuuri. “This is why I hate being named after you!” 

“Yura…” Yuuri tried placatingly, but Yuri only punched him. 

“No! I’m sick of that stupid nickname!” He stalked up to the human and poked a finger in the center of his chest. “I’m Yuri, got that, you stupid human? That’s Yuuri; I’m Yuri. There’s a difference. And if you mess us up again, I will drive your finger so far up your nose you’ll be picking boogers out of your brain! Understand?” 

“Ah…” The human looked back and forth between Yuri and Yuuri. “I’m confused. Who’s this guy?” 

“The guy who’s going to rearrange your face for you if you don’t get his name right!” Yuri fumed, but Yuuri grabbed him by the back of the collar again and dragged him back. 

“This is my brother, Yuri. Close to mine, but not the same. Confusing, I know.” He hésites to the human. “Yuri, this is… John.” 

“John?” You raised his eyebrows as “John” furrowed his brow. “You don’t know his name, do you?” 

“Why should I?” Yuuri snapped back. “He has a right to protect himself! You know what a Faerie like yourself would do if you got ahold of his name.” 

Turning away, Yuri snorted. “Please. As if a lost fool could give me any pleasure or satisfaction.” 

The  _ especially with my level of powers  _ was left implied. 

“O…kay…” the human stood up, slowly looking back and forth between Yuuri and his brother. “So, you’re… Yuri, but not Yuuri… can I call you something different then? Like maybe…Yurio?” 

For a moment, silence descended over the clearing, and then Yuuri tackled his brother to the ground before he could rearrange “John”’s face. 

“Let it go, Yura! He’s not worth it!” 

“He called me-!” 

“I know, but you just have to let it slide!” 

“I will sic my manticore on you, you bastard!” 

“Yura, no-!” 

“POTYA!!!” 

“VICCHAN, STOP HER!!!” 

Potya looked up at the fight on the ground and lazily got to her feet, yawning and stretching her barbed tail, before snorting derisively and curling back up around Vicchan, whose ears perked up at Yuuri’s command, but remained otherwise motionless. 

The human, however, had an entirely different reaction. He took one look at Potya and her scorpion tail, and then his jaw dropped. 

“You have a lion… with a… a…” 

And then his eyes rolled back into his head and he collapsed onto the ground. 

  
  


☙☘❧

 

For the second time in as many hours, Victor found himself roused by the presence of an angel. Blinking awake, he found warm brown eyes close to his own as Yuuri patted his cheek. The concern reflected in the way he bit his lip melted Victor’s heart until he remembered where he was, and that the figure above him was a Faerie, not an angel. 

Yuuri helped him up, and Victor hissed, pressing a hand to the back of his head. Luckily, his fingers came away dry, but his head still ached and he grunted as he let go of Yuuri’s hand and had to balance on his own. 

“What… just…?” 

“You’re probably not used to the air here,” Yuri said quietly, pulling Victor’s face in close and staring deep into his eyes. “It can get to humans sometimes. When I first- well, it’s just thinner than what you’re used to. Less air, more magic.” 

Victor’s brain stopped working for a few seconds as Yuuri’s nose came close enough to brush the end of his own, then Yuuri dropped his cheeks and stepped back. 

“Your pupils dilated. You’re going to be fine.” 

“Uh… yes.” Still reeling from his fall and Yuuri’s closeness, Victor shook his head and looked past the Faerie to see the other Yuri that had joined them, petting his terrifying scorpion-cat-thing that had caused Victor’s faint. “So your… brother… is he going to help you get me to a gate? Is that why he’s here?” 

“Of course,” Yuuri responded like it was the most natural thing in the world, to which Yuri looked up with a scowl. 

“Absolutely not! Whatever gave you that stupid idea?” 

“You haven’t left yet,” Yuuri pointed out, and his brother’s scowl only deepened. 

“Doesn’t mean I’m going to help you! I have no business with the likes of him.” His glare directed at Victor, then he snorted. “Besides, if you need  _ my _ help, you haven’t got much of a plan, now do you?” 

It was obvious the words were meant to be mocking, but from the eager glint in Yuri’s eyes and the way he made no move to leave them even after declaring his intentions, Victor could tell that he was more invested than he wanted to let on. Yuuri picked up on it too, turning a bland smile on his brother. 

“Of course I do.” 

Yuri held his anger in for only a few seconds, his face getting progressively redder with each passing moment of silence, before it exploded out of him. “Let’s hear it, then! Whatever you’ve come up with has to be worth a laugh or too.” 

Calmly, Yuuri kneeled down next to a tiny ball of floating blue flame that Victor hadn’t noticed before. It gave off light, though not as much as the moon above them, but little heat. “I’ll take him into the mountains east of Summer. I’m hoping-” 

“You’re  _ hoping _ ,” Yuri mocked. 

“-I’m  _ hoping _ ,” Yuuri continued without so much as a sharp look, “to find Celestino. He should be able to make a gate for the human, and his price won’t be as steep as some of the other options.” 

“Celestino?!” Yuri yelped, and his cat-thing hissed and flattened her ears against her head. “Are you crazy? He’s a recluse who refuses to bargain magic with anyone! And that’s even if you can find him, which you won’t be able to.” 

“I know,” Yuuri said simply, scooping the fireball up into his hand and smothering it. At the click of his tongue, Vicchan barked and shrunk down in size, wriggling out of the protesting cat-thing’s embrace, then darted over to his master. 

“You  _ know _ ?” Yuri shook his head. “Why bother even trying if you know you’re going to fail? Just forget the human and leave him here. Someone else will find him eventually.” 

“That’s exactly why I’m not going to leave him.” Yuuri stood up, his pack slung over his back. 

“You’re too soft, Yuuri. Are you willing to spend years wandering around the Summer Mountains?” 

“I was, but I have a better option now. I don’t need to know how to get to Celestino.” 

A glimmer of suspicion appeared in Yuri’s eyes. “And why is that?” 

Now a small measure of triumph, almost too tiny for Victor to catch, played at the corner of Yuuri’s mouth. “Because, if I’m not mistaken, you know how to find him, don’t you? You spend enough time with the banished and in the outskirts of the Seasons that someone as famous as him would be on your radar.” 

“Why, you-” Yuri snarled something in a language that was musically alien to Victor, but unmistakable in tone. “Why the hell would I tell you that even if I knew? I owe you nothing.” 

“Unfortunately, you only wish that were true.” Yuuri bent down and picked the crushed remains of something off the floor. Victor frowned; was that some kind of amulet? “You destroyed my property. Not only that, but a magical item of high value to me. Unless you want me to exact my revenge in a worse form, you’ll do me this favor.” 

Yuri said nothing, his eyes narrowing as he scoured Yuuri’s expression from top to bottom, then he scoffed and turned away. “Potya.” 

At the sound of her name, the scorpion-cat-monster stretched with a yawn and slunk to Yuri’s side, who grabbed a handful of her mane and pulled himself onto her back. She shook herself as Yuri settled against her bare fur, then reversed direction at the click of his tongue. 

Casting a look over his shoulder, Yuri snapped, “Are you guys coming? I go one speed, and if you can’t keep up, I’ll leave you behind. And I know all the shortcuts, so you’ll never be able to catch up.” 

A grin spread across Yuuri’s face, and he whistled for Vicchan to grow larger again before turning to Victor. 

“Hold on tight to me and be careful not to fall off. Yuri likes to race.” 

 

☙☘❧

 

Yuri very much liked to race, a fact Victor found out when he was once again on the back of the adorable giant shape-shifting hound. He was forced to clutch tightly onto Yuuri’s waist as Vicchan bounded happily through the woods after the cat-thing’s - which Yuuri had informed him was a manticore named Potya, but Victor would firmly believe was a demon until his dying day - scorpion tail. It wasn’t a bad situation by any stretch of the imagination, but a thrill of disconcertment still sunk itself low in his gut. Something about the other Yuri seemed off to Victor, whether it was the way he glared at Victor and called him an old man as Yuuri had to help him onto Vicchan’s back or the inconceivable sense of familiarity that refused to leave him alone. 

Hoping to focus on his surroundings a little more than the disconcerting feeling - or the solid warm back pressed against him - Victor tried to look at the trees they were running past, but Vicchan’s feet were flying too fast for him to really make any details out and the blurry scenery and lurching gait was starting to make him feel slightly nauseous, so he turned his face bury his nose into the soft silk at the collar of Yuuri’s jacket and tried to close his eyes. Yuuri initially stiffened, but then he placed a hand over Victor’s arm as if to protect him from falling off. 

“Are you still tired? Do you feel sick?” 

The wind almost whipped the words away from the pair, but Victor caught the low buzz on the outside of his hearing. Raising his head, he put his mouth close to the Faerie’s ear. 

“I’m fine. Just a little motion sickness.” 

“Do you want to stop for a while?” Yuuri made as if to slow Vicchan, but stopped when Victor shook his head against the back of his neck. 

“No, I’ll be okay. I actually feel- much better than before.” Better than he should after fainting. The ache in his head had all but faded, much faster than they normally would. 

“Try to get some more sleep, then,” Yuuri instructed. “I won’t let you fall.” 

Victor didn’t know why, but something about the Faerie’s promise made him want to believe him, so he just nodded against the silk of Yuuri’s jacket and let his head fall forward. His nose nestled in the hollow of Yuuri’s neck that smelled faintly of the lake he had pulled Victor out of and some spice that tickled his nose. If he didn’t know better, he would think the scent was magic. 


	5. Dark Fey

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Yuuri and Victor find a Faerie who can take him to someone who can send Victor home.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> OH MY GOD I finally did it! I finally got this chapter finished! It only took me... (does quick mental calculation) six months? Six months. Maybe a little more. Six and a half months. 
> 
> But I finally DID IT and now I am back ON A ROLL like BUTTER and I WILL BE ACTUALLY UPDATING THIS THING!!   
> Regularly!   
> Maybe even once a week!   
> On Sundays!   
> (If not, at least every two weeks.)
> 
> But yes, this is getting finished, and yes, I am working on it at a constant rate right now! I do not abandon fics, no matter how long I go in between posting chapters! (In my defense, I was actually writing an original story to use as a creative thesis... so it's not like I stopped writing completely.) 
> 
> One final note: I went through a few week ago and redid some of the earlier chapters, fixing a few things I had contradicted myself on and some other things I didn't like. If you're jumping into this story after waiting for the newest chapter, I would recommend going back to the beginning and rereading the entire thing.

☙☘❧

 

Victor was roused by the shift in Vicchan’s gait that signaled that he was slowing. He pulled away from Yuuri’s back just in time to see the flick of the manticore’s tail as Yuri jumped down to the ground. He tried to stretch, but frowned when he found that he couldn’t move. A closer inspection told him that Yuuri had linked their fingers together in his lap to keep him from falling off as they rode. Victor’s cheeks darkened as he pulled his hands free, and from the quick way Yuuri let go of his hands, he suspected that the Faerie’s were doing the same. 

“Okay, you old fogies! Wake up and get your asses in gear. We walk from here for a bit. We’re looking for someone. If he’s around here, he’ll come find me.” 

“How long have we been traveling?” Victor murmured, pushing the long strands of his hair that had escaped its binding away from his face. 

“Almost two days,” Yuuri answered as he pulled Vicchan to a halt and patted the werehound’s neck as he panted. 

“Two  _ days _ ?” Victor’s jaw dropped. “How long was I asleep?” 

“You needed the rest. Magic is hard on human bodies.” Yuuri slipped down from Vicchan’s back before Victor could respond, then extended a hand to him. Grateful, Victor took it and dismounted Vicchan’s back gracelessly. The werehound let out a resounding bark before shrinking down and darting forward into the thickening brush with a yip. 

“Vicchan, no! Come back!” Yuuri tried to throw himself after his werehound, but Yuri threw out an arm to stop him. 

“Don’t go in there!” 

“Get off me!” Yuuri pushed his brother’s hand away. “Vicchan listens to me! He wouldn’t run off like that! Something’s wrong!” 

“He wasn’t running off,” a low voice grumbled from the bush, then a tall figure in a thick black cloak stepped out of the underbrush with Vicchan in his arms. The werehound was pressing puppy kisses against the figure’s stubble-ridden cheeks. 

“Vicchan!” Yuuri hurried forward and grabbed the werehound from the stranger’s grasp, but Victor hung back, watching the dark figure. Like Yuri, he was getting an uncanny sense of recognition from the Faerie, but unlike with Yuri, the feeling that was crawling through his stomach was one of distrust, not familiarity. “Don’t you do that to me again! We don’t jump on strangers, remember?” 

The stranger gave Vicchan a pat on the head, and the werehound responded with another lick of his fingers. “It’s quite alright,” he said in that same low voice. “He probably just smelled more of his kind on me. It’s not often that the seasonal Fey have werehounds, so it’s likely he’s never seen or smelled another one before.” 

Yuuri’s face was buried in Vicchan’s neck, but at the stranger’s words he looked up slowly with distrust written on his face. As soon as he got a good look at the Faerie’s face and garb, he backed away from him, clutching his werehound. Sensing his distress, Victor backed up as well, using Yuuri as cover from the gaze of the stranger. 

“You… you shouldn’t be here! Your kind isn’t allowed across the border! Yura, what’s going on?” 

The stranger raised his eyebrows. “You didn’t warn them, Yurochka?” 

“I forgot, okay! Being around you is normal for me.” Yuri glared at his brother. “Stop being such a Court Faerie, Yuuri. You’re embarrassing me. Besides, we passed the border ten minutes ago. We’re in the outlands now.” 

“But- you know what he is? And you’re okay with that?” Yuuri’s jaw dropped. “Our races have been at war for centuries! You can’t trust a Dark Faerie!” 

“Now, that’s just mean,” the stranger commented, though Victor caught a hint of real hurt in his glance. 

“Hey! Don’t talk to Beka like that!” Yuri snapped, Potya rearing up behind him as his hackles raised. 

“ _ Beka _ ?! Is that a nickname? You gave a Dark Faerie a nickname?!” Yuuri dropped Vicchan on the ground, and the werehound took up a defensive stance that mirrored Potya’s. “Yura, what are you thinking?! You know the stories! Evil magics, black sorcery, the twisted rituals they use to steal magic! How can you associate with someone like-?” 

Yuri slapped his brother across the face before Yuuri had a chance to finish his question, knocking him to the ground. His expression livid, he towered over Yuuri, and Victor ducked behind Vicchan to avoid the fight that was coming. 

“I thought you knew better than to let those vapid Court Fey poison your mind. Beka is my  _ friend _ , something  _ you’ve _ never tried to be. Do you want to go to Celestino or not? Because Beka is the only one who can take you there, if he even agrees to after what you just said.” 

“Yurochka.” The Dark Faerie laid a gentle hand on the fuming Yuri’s shoulder. “It’s alright. It’s nothing I haven’t faced before.” 

“But you shouldn’t have to face it!” Yuri stamped his foot on the ground angrily. “I knew coming here was a bad idea. I should have never agreed to help you or that stupid human.” 

“Human?” The Dark Faerie looked up, and his gaze immediately zeroed in on Victor, who was currently shaking behind Vicchan’s back. “You mean this one?” 

He moved towards Victor, who tried to scramble backwards along the ground to avoid him but only ended up falling flat on his back. Yuuri jumped up in front of him, shielding Victor from his gaze. 

“Leave him alone! He’s got a contract with me.” 

“Relax; if you know as much about  _ my kind _ as you say, you should know that we don’t do deals with humans.” The Dark Faerie leveled a bland stare on Yuuri. “Let me look at him.” 

“No!” 

Victor pushed himself up off the ground, then gently elbowed Yuuri out of the way. He couldn’t just rely on the Faerie to take him home; he had to do some of this work himself, too. “Why do you want to look at me?” 

The Dark Faerie gave Victor an uncomfortably deep once-over before extending his hand. “Otabek.” 

Victor stared at the hand for a few moments before he jumped and clasped it. “Erm, yes. Nice to meet you, Otabek.” 

He made as if to withdraw his hand, but Otabek gripped it with the strength of a vice. “And your name?” 

“Oh, um…” Victor let out a nervous laugh. “It’s… John.” 

Otabek blinked, his dark eyes captivating. “It’s not really John, is it?” 

“It’s close enough!” Yuuri snapped. 

“Will you help us?” Victor pressed. “Please- I have a family: parents, a sister. I need to find them again, tell them that I’m okay.” 

The Dark Faerie cocked his head to the side very slowly, his gaze shifting from Yuuri to Victor and then back to Yuuri, his hands twitching at his sides. “I will help you,” he finally said, pointing to Victor, “but my guidance is not free. What would you offer me?” 

Victor’s jaw dropped. “I thought you said you didn’t make deals with humans?” 

“Not for their souls, no,” he snorted. “But I do offer my services for a fee to those I deem worthy. You fall among those.” 

“I can take the price, Beka,” Yuri murmured, laying a hand on the Dark Faerie’s shoulder, but Otabek shrugged it off, subtly tangling their fingers together instead. 

“You’ve already given me enough,” he whispered low enough that Victor almost couldn’t pick it up, but obviously Yuuri could from the way his face went blank as he stared at his brother. 

“I- I don’t have much with me,” Victor gasped out, hoping to diffuse the tension in the clearing. “Just, what I’m wearing, and my jacket.” The jacket had long since been stuffed in one of Vicchan’s magical packs that held more on the inside than they looked like they could on the outside, since it wasn’t needed in the heat of Summer, along with his skates. 

His skates! He still had those, packed in one of Vicchan’s saddlebags with his jacket. A light tremor crept up Victor’s back as he thought of them. For many years, they’d been his only solace, his way to experience the magic of the ice he suspected his human upbringing had robbed of him. But after what had happened, he didn’t think he’d be able to put them on again for a long time, if ever. Cold had never bothered him until he had felt it wrap around him in an embrace of death. Besides, he’d already decided to give up whatever Fey identity he might have had in the past long ago. He was a human now, or as close to one as he could ever be. He might as well start acting like it. 

“I have… something,” he said slowly, the words forming in his mouth like pebbles dropping to the earth. “I don’t know how much use it would be to you, but… it’s one of my most prized possessions. I will trade it to you in exchange for bringing me to the Faerie who can send me home.” 

Otabek looked at him for a long moment before nodding. “Very well. I accept your offer.” 

Shock dropped Victor’s jaw. “Just like that? You don’t… want to know what it is first?” 

“If it’s important to you, then I will consider it fair payment. I needed to see how much you were willing to give up.” His gaze flickered briefly to Yuuri. “And how much you were willing to defy your handler to deal with me.” 

Yuuri bristled at the comment, but turned his face to the ground, his cheeks flushing angrily. Nervously, Victor glanced at his unmoving form before he stuck an unsure hand into Vicchan’s magically expanding pack and rummaged around until he found his skates. With one last glance at the motionless Yuuri, Victor held the skated out to the Dark Faerie, trying not to look at them. 

“Here.” 

A frown crossed Otabek’s face as he pulled them from Victor’s grasp. Instinctively, Victor’s fingers tightened on the laces, but he forced them to relax and his heart began to beat normally again when they were in Otabek’s possession. 

“What… is this?” 

“They’re my skates,” Victor said, surprised by how easily he could explain it without wanting to grab them back. “When the pond back at home is frozen over in the winter, I can wear them out onto the ice so I don’t slip as easily. They’re for dancing on the ice.” 

“Dancing on the ice…” Otabek said thoughtfully, rubbing his chin. His gaze focused on the Dark Faerie, Victor didn’t notice how Yuuri looked up at the words, his expression twisted into something unreadable. “You certainly are a strange human,  _ John _ . Dancing on the ice. That sounds like a kind of magic only a Faerie would think of.” 

Stiffening, Victor tried to hide his sudden fear by chuckling nervously. “Well, I, um, fell through the bottom of a lake into here while I was doing it, so maybe it’s a portal of some kind and the magic influenced me somewhat…” 

Otabek’s brow furrowed at the nervous explanation, but didn’t address it. “Very well. I will take these… ice dancing shoes in exchange for bringing you to Celestino.” 

Victor dropped into a deep bow, the kind the Katsuki’s had taught him to do. “Thank you very much!” 

“Don’t thank me yet,” he warned. “You have yet to meet the man I’m bringing you to.” 

“Ride with me, Beka,” Yuri cut in in a soft voice, drawing Otabek’s attention away from Victor.

The Dark Faerie nodded, opening up a black rift in the air in front of him that he slipped the boots into before it closed again, leaving no trace of the magic behind. It was too fast for Victor to really comprehend what had happened, but he felt rather than saw the tension leaking from Yuuri, standing behind him, ratchet up a few notches at the sight. 

“We should go,” Yuuri said tightly, clicking his fingers at Vicchan for him to transform. When the puppy refused to obey, staring at Otabek with a happily lolling tongue, his face tightened. “Vicchan!”

The werehound turned to face his master again and bloomed in size, licking his cheek with a large slobbery tongue as if in apology of his transgression. 

“How far is it to Celestino?” Victor asked warily, memories of falling asleep for days at a time on the back of the werehound tickling at the back of his mind. 

“About a half day’s walk, maybe a few hours if we ride,” Otabek said carelessly, swinging up onto Potya’s back behind Yuri with the kind of ease that could only come from practice. 

The bottom dropped out Victor’s stomach. They had been traveling for weeks, and based on their lack of progress, he’d assumed that they would be traveling for weeks longer. Would they really find a Faerie who could open a gate back to his family before the end of the day? Could he hug Papa Katsuki again tonight and tell him how much he loved him, kiss Mama Katsuki on the cheek and tell her how sorry he was for worrying her? 

“Hey.” 

The quiet voice pushed Victor out of his thoughts, and he looked up to see Yuuri already on Vicchan’s back, holding a hand down to him. His heart in his throat, Victor took the proffered hand and jumped onto the werehound’s back, holding tight to the waist of the Faerie in front of him as they bounded after the scorpion tail disappearing into the scrub brush. 

If he was able to go home tonight, did that mean that he’d never be able to see Yuuri again?

 

☙☘❧

 

Yuuri had gone about four complete circuits of the Seasons when he first saw a Dark Faerie. It had been only a few Seasons since he’d recieved Vicchan as a gift, and he was still training the puppy, a task that task made more difficult by the fact that he could expand to many times Yuuri’s size and just sit on him whenever he didn’t want to listen. During one of his fits of insubordination, Vicchan had run off into the lowest parts of the Summer Palace, where the walls ceased to be made of brick and magic, and were instead made of earth and the massive roots of great trees and polished earth. Having long since lost sight of his werehound, Yuuri wandered the massive structures until he became hopelessly lost. 

He’d almost walked past the trapped Faerie without noticing him, and probably would have had the Faerie not called out to him. 

“Psst! Kid! Hey, kid!” 

Yuuri turned at the sound and caught sight of the Faerie who had called out to him. Unlike any other Faeries that he knew, his tones were neither the cold silvers and blues that belonged in Winter, or the darker browns and reds of summer. Instead, his hair was a deep violet, as were his eyes, and his pale skin that looked like it had never seen the sun was tinged with touches of the same shade. Upon closer inspection, Yuuri saw that he was stuck in the root structure that held up the rest of the palace. Actually, it looked less like he was stuck in it, and more like it had grown up around him. 

Uncertainly, Yuuri took a step towards the unknown Faerie. “Who are you? What are you doing here?” 

“Me? I’m just nobody, nobody important,” the Faerie laughed, shrugging his shoulders. It was the only part of his body that he could freely move besides his head. “But I do seem to have gotten myself in a bit of a situation. Do you think you could help me out?” 

Always a tender soul easily suckered in by those in need, Yuuri forgot about his werehound and took a few steps closer to the unknown Faerie. “What do you need help with?” 

“I’m imprisoned in this tree, what do you think I need-!” the Faerie snapped, his eyes glowing dark purple, then cut himself off and forced a smile. “I’m sorry. I’m just a little scared, I guess. You see, I took a nap down here without paying much attention and these roots just grew up around me! You know how the magic in this palace runs wild. Anyway, when I woke up the roots had grown over my hands so I can’t cast any magic to scare them away! Do you think you could help me get my hands free?” 

Rubbing his hands together, Yuuri hesitated. He knew that the magic that kept the palace alive did have a mind of its own, but he’d never heard of it capturing anyone before. Besides, he didn’t have the ability to convince tree roots to move. He’d just barely started the very basics of ice magic with Queen Lilia last winter, and King Yakov certainly hadn’t offered to teach him any of the magic of the earth. 

“I don’t know if I can,” Yuuri said slowly, tears springing to his eyes. “I’m sorry! I just don’t know enough magic!” 

“Hey! Don’t cry, kid!” The Faerie looked faintly alarmed at Yuuri’s tears. “You look like a smart kid. I’m sure you can do it if you try!” 

“But I  _ can’t! _ ” Yuuri cried even harder. “I only know ice magic!” 

“ _ Ice  _ magic? But your hair is-!” The Faerie cut himself off with a shake of his head. “Doesn’t matter. Look, kid, I’m in a tight situation here. Anything you could do to help would be appreciated.” 

Drying his eyes, Yuuri looked at the tree roots around the Faerie once more. They reminded him a little bit of King Yakov’s magic, the power to shift and move earth and the things it grew, and his eyes lit up. 

“I may not be able to do it myself, but I know someone who could help you! King Yakov! He looks mean, but I’m sure he’ll help if I asked him. Wait right here! I’ll go get him!” 

Yuuri turned around to fetch his surrogate father, but the Faerie’s face immediately twisted in panic as he strained at his bonds. 

“No! Not the King! Please, don’t get the King!” 

Drawing up short, Yuuri cocked his head to the side. “Why? He could do it, I’m sure of it!” 

The Faerie took a deep breath and plastered a smile on his face. “I mean, you don’t need to get King Yakov. He’s the King of the Faeries! He must be super busy doing Kingly things all the time. He doesn’t need to be bothered just because I took a nap in the wrong spot.” He forced a nervous chuckle, though the sound was more akin to a shriek than a laugh. 

Understanding dawned on Yuuri’s face. “You’re right! I didn’t even think about that. He might be upset if I bothered him, especially right after he gave me a gift.” 

The Faerie’s face paled. “G-gift? Who are you to the King, anyway?” 

“He’s-” 

Before Yuuri could finish his sentence, Vicchan bounded out of the darkness and leapt onto Yuuri, transforming into a massive hound in midair so when his front paws landed on Yuuri’s shoulders, the werehound flattened him to the ground. Giggling fiercely, Yuuri wrapped his tiny arms around Vicchan’s neck. 

“Vicchan! Don’t run off like that! I was scared!” 

Vicchan lapped at Yuuri’s face with a slobbery tongue before seeming to realize that they had an audience. Facing the unknown Faerie, he began to stalk towards him, a growl low in his throat. 

“Vicchan!” Yuuri grabbed at the scruff behind the werehound’s neck, but their size difference prevented him from slowing his forward momentum and he found himself getting dragged along behind Vicchan. “No, Vicchan! Be nice! He’s a friend!” 

At the word  _ friend _ , Vicchan slowed to a halt, though he refused to lower his hackles. 

“A werehound?” The Faerie breathed, his eyes wide. “I didn’t think they came to the Seasonal Lands! And such a beautiful specimen, too! Where did you get him?” 

“He was a gift!” Yuuri exclaimed proudly. His Vicchan was the best! “From the King!” 

Vicchan, as if sensing Yuuri’s proud thoughts, licked his owner’s cheek, distracting him from the half fear, half cunning that crept across the Faerie’s gaze. 

"So you would say you're close to the King, would you?" 

Pushing Vicchan aside, Yuuri bit his lip in thought. "I… I'm not sure. I mean, King Yakov has always been good to me and takes care of me, and he's much less scary than Queen Lilia is, though King Yakov would never teach me magic like she does."

"The Queen teaches you magic?!"

Stunned a little by the Faerie's outburst, Yuuri nodded. "She didn't want to do it at first, and I can only train during Winter when I'm at the Winter Palace with her, but she'd been teaching me some things. I haven't learned much, though, since I have no innate magic. She said it was impossible for someone who didn't have innate magic to learn it."

"Tell me about it. That's all the Court Fey blather on about," the Faerie snorted, and Yuuri beamed with pride.

"But she said I proved her wrong! I was able to learn some ice magic from her, even if I'll never be as good as a real Faerie."

He clapped his hand over his mouth as soon as he realized what he'd done, admitted to this strange Faerie who didn't know him that he wasn't one of them, that he was just a human changeling, but the Faerie didn't seem to be paying any attention to him, instead nodding to himself as he muttered under his breath.

"Yes, yes… I could… if only I could get out… Then I would be able to…"

"What are you talking about?" Yuuri asked nervously. There was a light in the violet Faerie's eyes now that was starting to make him feel uncomfortable, and he was beginning to regret stopping to talk to him. 

"Oh, nothing, nothing," he said, lowering his voice so Yuuri had to come much closer in order to hear him. "Hey, kid, that's something you and I have in common. I don't have any innate magic, either."

Yuuri's eyes got as round as saucers. "Really? But I thought my brother and I were the only ones! Where are you from?"

"Far away," the Faerie sighed. "I grew up in the Dark Side of the Moon's Shadow. All of us there are like you: we don't have any innate magic."

"But- that's impossible! All Faeries have innate magic!"

"Not us." The wicked gleam grew stronger in the Faerie's eyes. "Say, would you like to visit us? I'm sure the King wouldn't mind you leaving the circuit for a Season or two to learn about people like yourself. What do you say?"

"Can I bring my brother with me?" Yuuri asked eagerly.

"Of course! You can bring anyone you want!" The Faerie's smile widened as his eyes narrowed. "Just as soon as you help me get free, that is."

Hesitating, Yuuri lost his excited expression. "But… but I don't know how! I already told you-” 

"Anyone taught by Queen Lilia herself can undo some magic as easy as this," the Faerie interrupted. "Even if you only know some ice magic, you should be able to do it. Just freeze the roots around my arms, okay? Then I can get myself free the rest of the way."

One final time, Yuuri hesitated, looking to Vicchan for help, but the werehound only whimpered as he shrunk down to puppy size and pushed up against the backs of Yuuri's legs. Taking that as a good a sign as any, Yuuri finally nodded and settled into the first stance Queen Lilia had taught him.

"Okay. I- I'll try. I'm still not very good, so I'm sorry if I make you too cold."

"I'm sure you'll do fine," the Faerie insisted as Yuuri closed his eyes and began to sway to invisible music.

His body was young and still a little clumsy, too round in all the wrong places from lingering baby fat, but Queen Lilia had trained him well and a cool wind began to whip around the cavern as soon he began to move his arms. He brought them back as he leaned forward, like the wings or a dark-feathered swan, before reaching for the sky only to let his hands drop, clasping them together at his throat. Less delicately than he wanted to but with more dexterity than he had possessed when he first started training with Queen Lilia, Yuuri spun and danced around the floor of the cavern with his eyes closed until he felt the beginnings of a cool breeze that had no place in the hot land of Summer.

Yuuri heard the amazed Faerie whisper, "he's really doing it…" But he had no brain power left to focus on his audience now. It was taking every stubborn fiber in his tiny body to keep the magic gathering sluggishly in the palms of his hands from evaporating. Clenching his teeth together, he wound his arms in the air above his head, then stopped still and focused the gathering chill on the roots that bound the Faerie's arms.

For a moment, nothing happened, but Yuuri only strained harder until a crystalline dew covered the root, slowly solidifying into a hard frost. Within moments, the roots began to recoil from the cold as if they themselves were alive, cracks developing in their tough hide when they didn't get out of the ice's way fast enough. When they were drawn back enough that the Faerie could tear his arms loose, Yuuri dropped the pose, staggeringly from the amount of energy he'd used as the magic left his system. 

"I did it! I really did it! Did you see?" 

"I did," the Faerie said, but his facial expression was quite different now: colder, darker, almost feral. With casual disdain, he tore his legs loose and approached Yuuri. "Thank you so much for freeing me, little idiot child. That fool King Yakov has kept me locked up for long enough, and now it's time for me to exact my revenge!" 

Yuuri froze, his elation disappearing instantly. "Wha- what?" 

"I can't believe how honestly stupid you are! This is King Yakov's personal dungeons! Everyone who is imprisoned here is done so on the orders of your Faerie King, and they eventually become subsumed into the very bowels of this palace itself!" The Faerie laughed, drawing something from a pocket on the inside of his clothing. It looked like a simple knife hilt, unadorned and without a blade, but when he twirled it in his grip, it grew a devilishly long blade of pure shadow. "It's too late for my companions; they were taken into the foundation of the palace years ago. But you showed up just in time to free me, and now I shall have my revenge!" 

"N-no!" Yuuri protested weakly, tripping backwards, but he fell over his own feet and landed on the ground right before the Faerie. "Pl-please, please d-don't hurt me!" 

"Oh, don't worry, you're safe; for now. If you're as important to the Faerie King as you say, I'm sure he'll hesitate to kill me if I have you as a captive. You're coming with me." Grinning evilly, the Faerie reached for Yuuri's throat, but Vicchan threw himself in between the two of them. 

His expression twisting, the Faerie aimed a vicious kick at the werehound's side. "I'll kill you too, you stupid mutt!" 

"No!" Yuuri screamed, leaping at the Faerie's legs as Vicchan went flying off to the side. As Vicchan curled around his injured side, he cried out, "Go, Vicchan! Get out of here! Go get help!" 

Vicchan's ears perked up at the sound of his name and for a moment, Yuuri thought that he would ignore the order like he'd been doing since Yuuri had started trying to train him, but then he barked twice as if in understanding and took off down the long hallway. 

Yuuri only had a moment in which to feel elation at his werehound finally listening before the Faerie picked him up by the back of the neck, holding the knife made of shadow to his throat with the other hand. Tears sprung to his eyes, but terror closed up his throat so he was unable to scream. 

"That stupid beast isn't going to be able to do anything. Now, let's pay a little visit to that King of yours and find out exactly what you mean to him, why don't we?" 

Yuuri struggled soundlessly, tears streaming down his face, but he was unable to break free from the grasp of the Faerie who made his way out of the dungeon and into the hallways of the Summer palace in search of its King. 

 

☙☘❧

 

Victor wasn’t sure what to expect once they found the dwelling of this mysteriously absent Celestino, but he was thinking something along the lines of a secret door in the side of the sandstone dunes the terrain had changed to after they had left the relative safety of Summer, perhaps hidden by a few of the scrub brushes that seemed to be prevalent everywhere. What he got, instead, was just an itching feeling that they were going the wrong way. There was nothing out here, no life, not even any bugs. There was no way something as large and complicated a being as a Faerie could live out here when the land couldn’t even support beatles. 

When he told Yuuri as much, the Faerie had only shaken his head. “That means we’re going in the right direction.” 

“What do you mean?” 

“It’s a kind of magic barrier, very difficult to make, almost as difficult as a gate, and impossible to detect unless you know it’s there. It makes people want to turn their footsteps just slightly until they go directly around whatever the barrier is protecting, instead of through it. The more the person wants to break through the barrier, the more difficult it becomes for them to keep going.” 

“So that’s why I want to turn back,” Victor said, suddenly understanding. As if knowing the barrier was there was all it needed to break its hold on him, he no longer felt like he wanted to jump off Vicchan’s back and run back the way they had come. “That’s amazing! Celestino must be a super powerful Faerie!” 

Yuuri glanced behind him, letting Vicchan take the lead for a few seconds. “You know, you’re taking all of this remarkable well for a human.” 

“Am I?” Victor forced himself to chuckle nervously. If he was taking it well, it was probably because his heritage wasn’t human. “Well, I did think I died when I first came here. Anything after that had to be an improvement.” 

“I suppose.” WIth one more look, Yuuri faced front again just as Potya, carrying Yuri and Otabek, began to slow. 

Barking happily, Vicchan bounded up beside Potya and let his tongue lol out of his mouth. Otabek and Yuri dismounted, so Victor followed suit, followed shortly by Yuuri, who still looked at the Dark Faerie suspiciously. Ahead of them was a sandstone dune with a crack splitting its surface, leading to what Victor suspected was a labyrinth. 

“We go on foot from here,” he said simply, walking through the entrance of the labyrinth and disappearing. 

Yuri didn’t so much as blink, just gave Potya a kiss on the nose accompanied with some whispered instructions. She growled and gave a single lick to his cheek before bounding away, leaving Yuri to glare at Yuuri and Victor as if to dare them into saying anything about it. Neither of them, smartly, did so. 

“Beka won’t wait for us. Let’s go.” 

Turning his back on them haughtily, Yuri stalked after the Dark Faerie. Victor made as if to follow them, but Yuuri grabbed his arm to hold him back. 

“I don’t like this. Something about this just seems… wrong.” 

“Is it about the Dark Faerie?” Victor asked quietly. “I don’t know anything about this place so I don’t know why you don’t trust him, but I do.” 

“That’s not saying much,” Yuuri said with a tiny smile, hiding his hands behind his back, but not before Victor could notice that they were trembling. “You trusted me the moment you first met me.” 

“You saved my life.”

“For all you know, it was so I could abuse it later on.” 

“Well, you’re not going to, so that’s beside the point, isn’t it?” Victor scratched Vicchan under the chin, and he yipped happily as he shrunk down to his puppy form and jumped into Victor’s arms. “Maybe I do trust too easily, but I don’t think Otabek would lie to us. Your brother trusts him, doesn’t he? Isn’t that worth something?” 

“I… guess.”

Yuri chose that very moment to stick his head out of the entrance to the labyrinth again. “Did I stutter? Let’s get a move on, you old fogies!” 

“We’re coming!” Victor called to him before turning back to Yuuri. “Aren’t we?” 

Yuuri hesitated one more time, drawing a derisive snort from Yuri, before he nodded. “We’ll be right there, Yura.” 

“Took you long enough,” he snapped before he, too, disappeared into the maze of narrow, steep canyons. 

Victor turned and offered his hand - the one that wasn’t full of warm puppy - to Yuuri, who looked at it for a long moment before he took it. Yuuri’s hand was warm, almost uncomfortably so, and a little sweaty. Victor pretended not to notice how it shook in his grasp. 

“Let’s go.” 

Then he led them both into the canyon maze, and within two turns, they had lost sight and sense of where they had entered. 

 

☙☘❧

 

The child Yuuri finally found his voice when the Faerie had dragged him all the way through the palace to the front courtyard, scaring off various guards and servants as he went with his sneer and the blade pressed to Yuuri’s throat. All of the Faeries they’d chanced upon had been low level ones, most not even strong enough to take the circuit. There were Faeries in the palace strong enough to take down the Faerie holding Yuuri captive and rescue him, but not that many, and most of them Yuuri knew to be temperamental. Even if they heard the commotion, there was no guarantee they’d even investigate it themselves. 

The courtyard was the center of the palace, a ground high above the ground, supported by the trees that made the living palace, and had rope ladders, swings, and bridges to multiple other trees and smaller courtyards high in the trees. In the center of the courtyard was a giant fountain covered with thick green moss and spitting water out in a multi-directional show that changed every moment. Upon seeing the Faerie and Yuuri, the fountain stopped bubbling with laughter and began to scream, jets of water shooting high into the sky to sound the alarm. Yuuri screamed along with it, trying in vain to struggle against the Faerie holding him captive, but the coldness of that shadow blade against his throat soon stilled him again. 

“Careful,” the Faerie taunted, drawing the thin edge of the blade against Yuuri’s throat. “You don’t want me to slip up, now do you?” 

“Please, just let me go!” Yuuri sobbed and begged, his tiny hands clutching at the much larger Faerie’s arm. “I helped you get out, didn’t I? Please, I don’t want to hurt you! Just let me go!” 

“Ah, but if only this was only between us two,” the Faerie sighed. “That would be so much simpler. But no, there are other factors at play here, and we are both pawns in their game.” 

“What are you talking about? I don’t even know what that means!” Yuuri sobbed. “Please, let me go!” 

“Stop asking for something we both know is impossible!” The Faerie snapped, shifting his grip on the blade so the edge of it caught at Yuuri’s neck and drew a little blood. 

His eyes widening in terror, Yuuri tried to clamp his mouth shut to prevent it from making any more noise, but his sobs were too powerful. They pulled terrifying noises out of his tiny body until his ears picked up on a faint barking in the distance. 

“Vicchan!” He screamed as the werehound bounded down a rope bridge from a higher tree platform, skittering to a halt in front of the Faerie and his captive. 

With a snarl, Vicchan started to advance on the Faerie, and Yuuri cried out desperately. “No! Vicchan! I told you to go get help!” 

“He did.” 

The Faerie whirled around at the sound of the voice from high above, craning his neck to see who had spoken; Yuuri, however, would know it anywhere, and he cried out desperately as soon as the figure came into view. 

“Majesty! P-please, help me!” 

King Yakov’s face was cold and expressionless as he observed the two people below him, the Faerie holding the crying form of his pseudo-son. If anything, though, the Faerie’s grin only grew wider, and he laughed in the face of the King of Faerie’s stony silence. 

“Well, well, well, if it isn’t King Yakov himself! You know, I half believed this kid was pulling my leg when he said you favored him, but I guess not, seeing as you came right to his rescue! How precious is that?” 

His expressionless face giving nothing away, King Yakov stared down at the pair with narrowed eyes. “You. What are you doing in my palace, Dark Faerie?” 

Yuuri hiccuped a sob back in surprise. This was a Dark Faerie? One of the monsters the other Faeries of the court had always warned him about, a breed of Faerie that lived in the darkest shadows cast by the Seasonal Lands and lacked magic of their own, so they stole it from other living beings in twisted rituals of blood and death? He shook and started to cry even harder. 

The Dark Faerie snarled, his grip on Yuuri tightening. “Do you not recognize me, foolish King? After all, it was you yourself who bound me into the bowels of this very castle all those Seasons ago!” 

A flicker of something passed over King Yakov’s face, but it was gone as quickly as it had appeared. “So you escaped from my magic? Impossible! No Dark Faerie could ever break the bonds of Summer itself!” 

“No Dark Faerie, true,” the Dark Faerie sneered, “but  _ this _ little brat could. He iced over the heat of Summer until I could break free! Such talent from one who is just a child! It’s too bad he’s too stupid to have a sense of self-preservation.” 

King Yakov’s face showed the first signs of emotion since he had appeared, his tan cheeks paling. “Yuuri, you-  _ You  _ let him free?  _ You  _ lifted my spell imprisoning him in the deepest part of the palace?” 

“I- I’m s-sorry!” Yuuri wailed, fat tears rolling down his face. “I d-didn’t know! He just s-said… he s-said-” 

“He s-said, he s-said,” the Dark Faerie mocked, then pulled Yuuri’s head back as he balanced the blade on the spot where his Adam’s apple would be, silencing the young boy. “Shut up! The Big Kids are talking right now! I’ll get right to the point,  _ Majesty _ . If you want this little kid back, you’re going to have to listen to a few of my demands.” 

King Yakov’s face hardened again. “I don’t deal with the Dark Fey.” 

“Then you can watch the child die!” The Dark Faerie hissed, his eyes alighting with fury. “Honestly, I was going to ask for my companions to be freed, but if this child means anything to you at all, I think I’d rather kill him just to watch the expression on your face as I throw his corpse off the edge of this courtyard!” 

Yuuri screamed as he felt himself being lifted higher in preparation for a blow, but Vicchan reacted to his scream and jumped at the Dark Faerie. The werehound never connected, the Dark Faerie spinning and kicking him away before his teeth could do any damage, but the move sent him off-balance. Taking advantage of the Dark Faerie’s sudden imbalance, King Yakov raised a hand with an expressionless face and called upon the powers of Stone and Summer to once again trap Yuuri’s captor. 

The ground around his feet softened, drawing him down as vines thrust up from the softened suspended earth to twine around his thighs, up to his waist. With a cackle, the Dark Faerie held Yuuri above his head, out of reach of the vines. 

“Are you really that desperate to kill this child? Dear me, Majesty, I thought he actually meant something to you! My mistake.” 

The vines hesitated in their frenzy, only slightly, but enough that the Dark Faerie noticed. A truly evil smile stretching across his face as he twisted to face the Faerie King, putting his back to the gushing fountain, he simpered, “Well, I guess I was right after all! For all your threats, you won’t let him die! You’ve gone soft, Majesty. There was a time you would have killed one such as him just to get to me.” 

“Yes,” King Yakov allowed in a cold tone, his raised hand clenching into a fist, “but I have no need of such meaningless sacrifices now.” 

“What does that mea-?!” The Dark Faerie started, but he was cut off with a gurgle when a spear of pure water appeared through the front of his chest. 

Yuuri froze in fear at the sight of the water spear, even his tears stilling as he grew even more afraid, thinking that Queen Lilia was there to witness his failure. His fear proved unfounded, however, when the water spear dissolved in a gush down the front of the Dark Faerie’s chest, leaving a bleeding hole where it had just been. Queen Lilia, he knew, would never melt her ice, not for any reason, and there was no mortal or immortal heat that could do the job either. 

A trail of blood trickled down the Dark Faerie’s chin. He looked almost surprised as he lost his grip on Yuuri, dropping him to the ground where he could finally catch a glimpse of the Faerie standing in the fountain. Vicchan grabbed him by the scruff of his neck and started pulling him away from the Dark Faerie, but not before he recognized the Faerie as Chris Giacometti, one of both King Yakov’s and Queen Lilia’s most trusted advisors and the strongest Faerie in the Court after its rulers. 

A wall of vines came up in between Yuuri in Vicchan’s mouth and the Dark Faerie, hiding whatever made him scream as Chris raised a hand and water splashed out of the fountain on all sides. Shaking, Yuuri tried to stand on his own but his knees were too weak and he fell back down again, tears streaking down his face in sobs that had long since exhausted him too much to produce any actual sound. 

“Because egotistical Dark Fey like you never think to look behind them,” King Yakov said quietly, suddenly at Yuuri’s back, and the child jumped away, landing on his butt as he stared up at his King. 

There was a long, drawn out scream from behind the vine wall that ended abruptly, as if it had been cut off by something. King Yakov glanced up once before crouching down next to Yuuri and extending a hand. 

“Yuuri. Are you well? Did he injure you?” 

King Yakov’s hand reached for Yuuri’s arm, but Yuuri flinched away from him, eliciting a frown from the King of Faerie’s normally stoic expression. 

“Yuuri? Is something wrong?” 

“It’s… it’s… it’s all m-my f-fault!” Yuuri sobbed, finally finding his voice. As if sensing his distress, Vicchan licked the tears away from Yuuri’s cheek and he grabbed the werehound around the neck in a chokehold that had to be uncomfortable, though Vicchan didn’t try to pull away. “H-he lied to me and I l-let him escape! He’s a bad-d Faerie and I n-never even noticed! He hurt Vicchan and it’s all m-my fault!” 

After a moment of stunned deliberation, King Yakov’s expression softened somewhat. “It’s not your fault, Yuuri. You didn’t know any better. I don’t blame you.” 

“R-really?” Yuuri sniffed hopefully. Nuzzling his cheek, Vicchan barked as if to agree with the Faerie King. 

“Of course.” This time when King Yakov reached out, Yuuri let him take ahold of his tiny child’s body and pick him up. His eyes widening in surprise, Yuuri’s arms wrapped around King Yakov’s neck as the Faerie held him close. 

“I’m just glad you’re safe. I can’t lose you, too.” 

The last part was muttered directly into Yuuri’s hair, almost too low for him to pick out, and he frowned through his tears. Before he could ask the King what he meant, however, they were interrupted by a wave of Chris’s water tearing down the vine wall King Yakov had made and washing away any trace of blood or anything else that might have remained of the Dark Faerie. 

“I think I remember that guy!” Chris remarked as he shook excess water off his hands. “Say, Majesty, didn’t you lock him away during the last war with the Dark Fey? How’d he get out?” 

“Apparently he tricked Yuuri into letting him out, then used him as a hostage,” King Yakov said stiffly. 

Eyes widening, Chris gasped, “ _ You _ let him out, Yuuri? How did you manage that? The magic on those seals would be difficult for even me to undo!” 

Shifting awkwardly in King Yakov’s arms, Yuuri mumbled, “I just… danced like Her Majesty showed me, and the ice scared the tree roots away.” 

Yuuri missed the look Chris and King Yakov exchanged over his head before Chris laughed. 

“I guess Winter Magic would scare the bonds of Summer away! That’s pretty amazing that you’re learning magic from Her Majesty, Yuuri. You’ll have to show me some more of it, alright?” 

“Some other time,” King Yakov interjected, clutching Yuuri a little tighter to his chest. “I need to make sure he’s unhurt first.”

“Of course.” Chris bowed, then with a final wink at Yuuri, he dissolved into water that flew back to the fountain basin and started its happy gurgle once more. 

Without another word, King Yakov turned and stalked down one of the rope bridges that connected the courtyard to one of the lower ones, talking them both back into the bowels of the living Summer palace. Yuuri tried to stay alert, but the events of the day, his tears and the magic extracted from him, were too much and he dozed off against the warm, solid chest of the King of Faeries. 

 

☙☘❧

 

“Hey, Yuuri? Are you alright?” 

Yuuri jumped as the human touched him on the arm, drawing him out of the memory of the last time he’d come in contact with a Faerie who hailed from the land in the Darker Shadow of the Moon. Ahead of them in the labyrinth, Otabek and his brother were walking shoulder to shoulder, the backs of their hands brushing together. The Dark Faerie glanced back over his shoulder like he could sense Yuuri’s thoughts by the terrified hatred rolling off him, frowning as if to say,  _ move faster. _

Taking a shaky breath, Yuuri smiled weakly at the worried human next to him. “I’m fine. You don’t have to worry about me.” 

He faced front again, only to run directly into Otabek’s back, not having noticed the Dark Faerie coming to a halt. With another annoyed glance over his shoulder, Otabek gestured at the dead end they had just come to. 

“This is it.” 

The human frowned. “This is what? There’s nothing here.” 

But there was something there, even Yuuri could tell that: the dead end was simply an illusion, a glamour to fool anyone who didn’t know how to look behind the magic. But even though he could tell it was there, Yuuri couldn’t tell what was beyond it, and that scared him more than anything else since they’d entered that sandstone labyrinth. 

“This way.” 

Without saying another work, Otabek stepped forward, directly through the stone of the dead end, and disappeared. With one final hard glance at Yuuri and his shocked human companion, Yuri snorted quietly and disappeared through the wall after Otabek. 

“Wait for me, dumbass Beka.” 

The human took an excited step after him, but stopped when he realized that Yuuri had yet to move. “Yuuri? Are you sure you’re alright?” 

Vicchan, as if sensing Yuuri’s distress, jumped out of Victor’s embrace into that of his Master, licking at his chin. Smiling at the squirming puppy in his arms, Yuuri buried his face in his fur for a moment before staring back at the illusionary wall. 

“I said I’m fine. Let’s go.” 

Closing his eyes so he couldn’t talk himself out of it, Yuuri stepped forward through the illusion.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for sticking with me, everybody! Next chapter should be out soon!

**Author's Note:**

> Follow my blog if you want! It's https://www.tumblr.com/settings/blog/far2addicted  
> I don't post much, but I will keep track of my update schedule there.


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